Episode 15 transcript

Note: this transcript is AI-generated, and as such, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.

Chad (00:01.876)
Happy rainy Sunday here and welcome back to the Aural Mess podcast. I'm joined today by Phil DiCriscio, who otherwise goes by Steely Phil. Phil has a podcast where, you know, shockingly, he talks about Steely Dan with a variety of guests. I'm doing the same thing. My standard disclaimer is this is not a Steely Dan podcast, but goddamn it, we always end up going there. So hi, Phil.

Phil DiCriscio (00:22.806)
Always. Hey, hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for being on my pod twice, I believe, right? We talked memes and then to Gaucho and we need to plan Lost Gaucho at some point. But that will be, you know, in the future. And yeah, happy to be on this. Have been enjoying following the pod so far, your pod, and you have some cool guests and cool topics. And there's a backlog because I've been busy, but I do plan on, I, you know, I have the playlist pinned, right? Of things I need to keep watching. It's like Aural Mess this episode.

Chad (00:31.74)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (00:52.502)
some wrestling thing, some Metroid thing, Aural Mess again, some true crime thing, Chad again. So it will happen.

Chad (00:54.964)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Chad (01:02.293)
Well, I am honored to be part of that playlist next to those other auspicious videos. So thank you. And thanks for being on. So, you know, we're going to do a theme today, which, you know, I don't usually do, but I'm excited about this one. So we're going to talk about favorite albums. You know me, I've said this a bunch of times. I'm not a big favorite ranking because everything changes for me, like, you know, pretty much every week, right. Or every day sometimes. But just just ephemeral, I mean, not ephemeral, eternal favorite albums, right. Like things that we just.

Phil DiCriscio (01:09.14)
Yeah!

Chad (01:31.252)
still love, you know, however many years later. And I think that the first one we're going to dig into, because it was on both of our lists, was, you want to see it up?

Phil DiCriscio (01:40.662)
Imagine this, we have a mutual favorite album and it's a Steely Dan album. And it is of course, 1977's Masterpiece Aja. This is my first pressing that actually I got back all the way in high school and did not realize the significance. I only knew Peg and Josie and was like, I'll buy the record. And then I got into Steely Dan about a year ago and I like was looking at all the Matrix stuff. Cause I was getting real, real deep into it. And I'm like, oh, I've had this first pressing since I was 16. It's a little beat up, you know, the sides a little shredded, but it is.

Chad (01:48.321)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (02:10.39)
You know, it's my baby. So it does. Famously, I only got into Steely Dan a year ago, and it was a very deep, quick, deep, and fiery love affair. And since then, I've listened to this album probably 100 times. It's an album I will just listen to. Like, if I have a half an hour kill in the car, I'll just put on Aja.

Chad (02:13.301)
It has that aura.

Chad (02:35.916)
Yeah, same. And I love the fact that, you know, you're such a new sort of convert to the gospel of Steely Dan, but it makes me really happy that, you know, I was just talking to Zamauri Jones on a previous episode and you've had Zamauri on your pod and between you and him and Mackenzie and everybody else that I've sort of encountered on Steely Dan Twitter and Steely Dan Instagram, like, it's so awesome that this...

you know, the generation after mine as well as the generation after yours is already like, you know, getting into Steely Dan and it just makes me super happy, so.

Phil DiCriscio (03:07.574)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (03:12.342)
Yeah, I forgot who I was talking about with this on my pod, but there's a weird like, when I was growing up and I thought of Steely Dan.

Phil DiCriscio (03:21.45)
And you know, they can be lumped in more or less with like your classic rock groups. Obviously they're very different. And we'll talk about that maybe using Aja as the catalyst. But there's always this kind of because they're so it's, you know, it's pop jazz fusion. It's not pop rock fusion. So because of the jazz omen, Steely Dan was kind of associated, at least in my mind, to kind of the same people that I was going to go see classical concerts with. Like I'd be sitting in the audience, there'd be some gray hair dozing off next to me. When the Philadelphia Orchestra was playing like Prokofiev 5, one of the greatest symphathists,

Phil DiCriscio (03:51.336)
in my opinion symphonies of all time and there's just some old guy dozing off and that's kind of... Steely Dan's like I think was considered or maybe is still is considered the pop version of that but I found there's like Steely Dan fans are either 18, 28 or like in their 40s and like the older you know the boomers more or less are kind of outliers at this point you know the ones who who reject Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go and think Can't Buy a Thrill's the best album or Aja don't really consider you know maybe a uh...

or a Gaucho, but there's this really strong young person base, like 30s and younger, that I've really embraced Steely Dan, I'm not exactly sure why. I have theories, it's because everything kind of sucks as a young person. I've accepted, I have my professional job where I have health insurance to get a decent salary and I work a side job and I still.

Phil DiCriscio (04:51.414)
I've kind of accepted that and then you listen to Steely Dan and in the 70s these two guys were singing also about how everything sucks.

Phil DiCriscio (05:03.254)
And I think there's a lot, unfortunately, and a lot of the characters that they created, Deacon Blues or the... I don't know.

Phil DiCriscio (05:15.126)
the world care.

Phil DiCriscio (05:19.798)
I think a lot of young people, for better or for worse, relate to that. And then you have, it's just great music, just in general. So I think this kind of... This omnipresent depression, plus the smooth sounds of Steely Dan kind of really make fans out of someone like Zamauri, who's such a bright young person, and he likes music about the saddest people who ever existed.

Chad (05:42.292)
Right, right. And I feel like it's kind of funny because like you said, the darkest, most cynical, sad-ass music probably ever put to tape is backed by the smoothest, easiest to listen to, most complex musical accompaniment. So it's kind of funny.

Phil DiCriscio (05:49.718)
Yeah

Phil DiCriscio (05:59.394)
Like Gaucho being you know seven of being described as seven of the worst people you could ever meet The one that that when I try to turn people into Steely Dan if they're like a concept album person I and it is the smoothest thing you could ever listen to. Like, Hey 19, Glamour Profession, Time Out of Mind. It's just like the smoothest, cleanest, you know, Babylon Sisters for sure. And then it's like, it's just so dark and upsetting and the best. But I think part of the reason we love it is that dichotomy, right? Why is, in my opinion, why is the show, like the Sopranos, so loved? Yeah, it's great characters and great writing, great acting, but it's also, it's not only...

Phil DiCriscio (06:40.502)
violence, but it's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. And then you have a character like Paulie Walnuts who will whack someone in one scene and in the very next tell the worst joke and laugh about it. And I think it's that dichotomy.

Phil DiCriscio (07:02.51)
the musical, one of the many musical embodiments of that. You could say the same thing maybe about the Velvet Underground or we'll get to the Smiths with me later. It's similar. What draws you to Aja?

Chad (07:11.316)
Yes.

Chad (07:16.725)
I think it's their most cohesive album. And it's funny because, you know, we'll dig into this when we start talking about albums. Like I've never really been an album guy. Like I have to love an artist and love every song on an album. Otherwise, like I'm more of a casual listener to some artists. Like I've I can tell you 20 or 30 of their songs that I like across their catalog. But there might be 30 or 40 more that are album cuts that I just never got into because I never listened to the whole album. Right. So I think what draws me to Aja is just.

Phil DiCriscio (07:34.582)
Yeah.

Chad (07:46.447)
First of all the musicianship right? I feel like Royal Scam was a turning point for the band. It's probably arguably one of my favorite albums even maybe over Aja some days and maybe even over Gaucho some days, which is saying a lot. But I think that sort of set the stage and you know got them into this space of like okay, we're honing this craft. We're perfecting this idea of you know that whole jazz

combination. Even though Royal Scam was more guitar driven and a little heavier sound, I just feel like the writing, the playing, the studio musicians, it became more of a revolving door. And I think that kind of set it up for Aja. So by the time they got to Aja, it was like they were a little older. They had an album out almost every year in the 70s, pretty much. They weren't that much older in between albums, but I feel like a lot went down. And...

Phil DiCriscio (08:17.514)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (08:21.942)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (08:37.318)
Yeah.

Chad (08:42.804)
you know, just something like Black Cow, which again, on the surface seems like a little bouncy fun song, but when you listen to it, it's like, you know, another fucked up individual, right?

Phil DiCriscio (08:45.938)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (08:50.998)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're seeing a friend or a lover or an ex -friend or ex -lover just blasted out of their mind at a diner, which is a very New York thing, I would imagine. And then they create this perfect odyssey of a tune around this one idea that is unfortunately maybe very, very common or was very common of just someone out in public just being kind of a mess. And yeah, Black Cow's interesting. I mean, it's a great start.

Phil DiCriscio (09:21.16)
with that big kind of bass line with drums and that little bit of guitar. And then as the song progresses, I think this is the most finely orchestrated Steely Dan album. I mean, as good as The Royal Scam is in terms of the writing and the lyrics and the playing. Aside from that instrumental break in Green Earrings, it's just kind of like what you would expect from a song. Oh, it's a rock song, here's the guitar solo. Turns out it's...

Phil DiCriscio (09:50.934)
Kid Charlamagne solo. It's, you know, amazing, but it's expected. It's in the trope, you know, like something like a Caves of Altamira. Oh, you have a horn section. There's going to be a horn outro. Amazing. One of the best, but something like Black Cow starts off kind of simple, like kind of like a rock, it's drum, guitar, bass, vocals. And then as the song progresses, you start getting the background singers, you start getting the horn section, which starts out very sparse and then eventually becomes more fully orchestrated.

Chad (09:53.812)
Right, yep.

Phil DiCriscio (10:20.054)
And then at the end you have that awesome saxophone outro with the girl so outrageous and like I said the horns are screaming and but still the rhythm section is still very grounded, very simple. It's a very simple bass line, probably the most simple Chuck Rainey bass line on any of the albums. And a very simple drum by I believe Paul Humphrey. I did a pod yesterday talking about Dan drummers. So this is more or less fresh in my brain. But it's that odyssey, it's simple.

Chad (10:21.564)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (10:48.566)
and it gets more complex, harmonically not, but just orchestrationally. And it is such a great test of speakers. And I don't think that's the be all end all of all records. I do have the UHQR, because I kind of wanted to see what it would sound like. And it sounds amazing. And I have a first pressing, like a first and a half pressing, those Canadian colored pressings. And I have a Japanese pressing that's really nice. Actually, it's a MCA repressed, but it's on really heavy vinyl.

Chad (10:57.306)
Hahaha.

Phil DiCriscio (11:18.678)
but it's just a wonderful album. Song topic, kind of standard stuff about someone on drugs, at least very standard for Steely Dan. And on the outset, it's, like I said, I think it's very simple, but they keep adding layers and layers and nothing, it's engineered so perfectly that when they add a texture, whether it's the background singers or the horn section, it just becomes another part of the tune. It doesn't.

take away, it doesn't bleed into the already established kind of rock solid rhythm section. Yes.

Chad (11:53.588)
Everything breathes on Aja. Every instrument, every part is clear and distinct. Nothing gets buried. Nothing gets lost in the mix. I don't think, not that I can think of. And, you know, props to Roger Nichols, obviously. I mean, you know, Donald and Walter, and I think, you know, Gary Katz's ear was, was also a factor, but I mean, like Roger and I forget who else worked on engineering and mixing on the, on the record, but probably Elliot Scheiner, I feel like was involved in that one.

Phil DiCriscio (12:03.138)
Now.

Phil DiCriscio (12:22.358)
Wasn't there a woman on that too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm seeing. Yes, yes, I listened to that interview not too long ago. So I'm looking at a main engineers, Nichols, Shiner, Bill, Bill Schnee, I believe it's pronounced and Al Schmidt and then assistants, Lenise Bent, Ken Klinger, Linda Tyler, Ed Rack, Joe Bellamy and Ron.

Chad (12:23.844)
Yeah, Lenise Bent, she did, yeah, she was like the assistant engineer, I think. She's awesome.

You've heard her tell the story about home at last. Yeah.

Chad (12:39.432)
Bill Schnee, right, right.

Chad (12:49.842)
Well.

Phil DiCriscio (12:51.67)
Hagelmann.

And it's mastered by Bernie Grundman, which, yeah, which who also, how many years later? And so what's the 77 to 2023? What's the, what's the time difference on that? Forty something. He did the remastering on the, I think he's doing all the UHQR. He at least did Aja. But yeah, it's a perfectly like manicured, I guess for lack of a better word, manicured sound.

Chad (12:55.926)
Yes, of course.

Chad (13:06.28)
46 years, yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (13:22.358)
that no other Dan album touches. Gaucho does, but it's also, you know, you said and I agree that Aja breathes the most, and Gaucho, I think on purpose, is kind of a stranglehold. And I don't think it's Wendel. I think part of it, like Hey 19, I think is a lot of the kind of stranglehold on that, I think is Wendel. But like Babylon Sisters is all Purdie and it's still...

It's like a little, and that's I think the appeal of the album is, it's like the, it's like that meme with Kermit and like the evil Kermit, right? And he's looking with the hood. It's like, if normal Kermit is Aja, Gaucho is like, evil Kermit. Even though Aja, with any other band, would be the evil Kermit. This is how Steely Dan is, is, you know, there's like a couple of nice songs on here that are about nice things, kind of. I got the news.

Chad (14:06.221)
Right.

Chad (14:11.157)
Right.

Chad (14:18.113)
Sorta kinda, yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (14:21.206)
Definitely. Depending on if Josie is coming out of prison or just returning home. Because if she's... Yeah, I mean, they're throwing cherry bombs or battle apples, right? So it's not... Yeah, even Peg, it's like, what kind of movies are those? And is it just some jilted lover who's just jealous? And then I don't know what age is about. Like the song.

Chad (14:24.914)
I always thought prison. I always thought she was coming back from some some shit, you know, like it wasn't just

Chad (14:47.509)
Yeah, I mean, dime dancing, it speaks to like, I mean, to me, it was always sort of like GIs coming back from the war and, you that kind of thing. I mean, at the bottom of it, it's really just, you know, Fagen lusting after like his friend's wife or his cousin's wife or somebody, wasn't it?

Phil DiCriscio (14:54.29)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (15:01.622)
Yeah, it was cousins or neighbors, neighbors wife. He came back from Vietnam or Korea. I think the timeline, it would be Korea, I think, timeline wise, and came back with a wife whose name was Aja, I believe spelled differently. I don't even think he was lusting. I think he just thought it was like, hey, buddy's wife, hi. And then thought it was a cool name, which it is. No, no, the Fagen lust song is Rikki Don't Lose That Number.

Chad (15:05.653)
Yeah.

Chad (15:13.141)
Probably.

Phil DiCriscio (15:31.67)
The complete gigachad move of college Donald Fagen hitting on his on his professor's pregnant wife completely Does cannot read the room and did the most gigachad bait? What did what are the kids on the internet say based? red -pilled Whatever just gigachad

Chad (15:33.097)
Hey!

Chad (15:48.374)
I get so much shit for my name by the way and like I am so not a

Phil DiCriscio (15:58.966)
Oh yeah, the Giga Chad versus the Virgin, whatever. The Chad Donald Fagen versus the Virgin College Professor.

Chad (16:05.938)
That's funny. The funny thing is my name wasn't really that popular when I was growing up. I only knew like maybe two or three other chads my whole life, you know, so now that. Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (16:11.76)
But I guess.

Phil DiCriscio (16:18.62)
Yeah, it's still not popular. I know you and then and then a friend of mine who I work with who is probably your age. Those are the only. Only Chad's. I mean, I'm I'm I'm Philip. I mean, I know like three other Philips and one is my father. So anyway, speaking of Aja, the song, I guess track two side one track to the song Aja.

Chad (16:36.03)
There you go, there you go.

Phil DiCriscio (16:48.508)
My favorite track on this album, my favorite Steely Dan song, my everything, my blueprint for listening to someone trying to cover the drums on that and knowing if they can hack it or not by how tight and how succinct and can they get the stick click in there sort of thing. Oh yeah.

Chad (17:08.757)
The only drummer I've seen that rivals Gadd on that song is Keith Carlock. No hate to any of the other touring drummers that came before him, but I just feel like that dude's just untouchable.

Phil DiCriscio (17:21.596)
So I was talking about this with my friend Sam and we did Dan Drummers. And you know, first two Dan albums you have Jim Hodder. Third, Pretzel Logic, even though on the surface it looks like Hodder, it's Jim Gordon with a little...

Chad (17:34.169)
Wait, stop right there for a sec. Did you have you subscribe to expanding Dan the newsletter? Did you read the interview? Yeah. No, he was never interviewed post Dan. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (17:38.78)
Yeah, yeah, there was an interview. I didn't listen to it or read it. I just saw it. Once again, it's on the list of things to catch up with. But because he was never interviewed, right? More or less, he did some session work. He died in the early 90s, right? He like drowned.

Chad (17:51.759)
He died in 1990 at like 42 or something like, you know, just unimaginable young age. Yeah, he drowned in his swimming pool somehow. But the interview's great. Yeah. And he basically says like, I don't think he played, he didn't even really play a note on Pretzel Logic. Yeah. Right.

Phil DiCriscio (17:59.548)
Oh, I believe it.

Phil DiCriscio (18:10.402)
No.

that but yeah so you have on Pretzel Logic it's Jim murderer Gordon because that's I did not know about that and I was like oh who's this Jim Gordon guy and then I read Wikipedia and it's like murder like it's like it's like career touring you know discography murder unfortunately it is why he was schizophrenic right he was like

Chad (18:28.881)
Yeah, yeah, I know that was another sad story. The dude had like schizophrenic. Yeah, yeah. Right. Who was like 19 years old or 18 years old when he came into play? I was like. Yep. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (18:39.644)
And it's funny, because yeah, already off from Twirlin' Sunny and Cher about to start Toto. But it's funny, because they were always trying to find their perfect drummer. And then in Aja, it's probably, well with Aja, it's seven tracks, six drummers, six different drummers. Gaucho, it's like, it's seven tracks, I think four different drummers, and Wendel. Two Against Nature is like 10 tracks.

Chad (18:55.577)
Right.

Chad (19:00.981)
Right.

Phil DiCriscio (19:07.356)
four or five different drummers. And then they, on the song, Two Against Nature, they got Keith Carlock. And that was, he was their touring guy ever since. And then he did every single track on Everything Must Go and has been with them since 1999, 2000. And he is, he's like the perfect, what they wanted as a drummer. He could do anything, any style, rock solid. And yeah, cause you listen to that, like some, well, they didn't play Aja on the 93 tour.

Phil DiCriscio (19:38.204)
the beginning. But I think by like the Art Crimes tour 96 they would play the song Aja and who was on that? Was that Ricky Lawson? And he's great, he's amazing. Amazing. I love his shuffle when they let him do one of the shuffle tunes and his Aja is great but like it's not Steve Gadd and it's not Keith Carlock and the fact that Keith Carlock can do it is it just shows how great he is and how much of a special talent he is.

Chad (19:46.23)
Yeah, I think it was Ricky Lawson. Who's a phenomenal drummer. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Chad (19:56.276)
No.

Phil DiCriscio (20:07.964)
Because Aja is one of those tracks that, you know, the pop tune, I mean, cool, cool chord progression, cool harmony, kind of cool cryptic lyrics. And then you get to the instrumental break. And you have Wayne Shorter on the tenor sax. And that's amazing. And underneath you have this drumming and the Wayne Shorter sax takes away from it. And then all the the the outro and it's just Steve Gadd and Donald Fagen doing like the the spacey chords. And it's I mean, it's what a minute, minute and a half outro. It's not long enough.

Chad (20:16.01)
Oh yeah.

Chad (20:26.006)
Yep.

Phil DiCriscio (20:37.916)
I could just listen to, like when he kicks into the samba thing on the ride cymbal and it fades out, it's like, why, could we just ride this out for the rest of the first side of the album? They did two takes, they did not, so apparently what happened, well they rehearsed, but apparently, so the day before it was the same rhythm section, so Michael Omartian, Larry Carlton, Denny Dias, Becker I think plays bass on Aja.

Chad (20:41.31)
Oh god, yeah.

Chad (20:47.03)
And that was one take, right? Or was it a two taker? Okay. Right.

Chad (21:01.558)
Becker does lead one of the leads. Yeah, it's him Denny and Carlton. I think take turns. Yeah

Phil DiCriscio (21:06.492)
I thought Becker. Becker might be on guitar. Yeah, yeah, so Becker's like... And Carlton. Yeah, uh, there's Victor Feldman on percussion. Anyway, so they rehearsed the day previously with that whole rhythm section, except it was Jim Keltner, who would be the...

Chad (21:23.278)
He was on Josie. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (21:26.204)
guy or yeah the trash can lid guy and then they come the next day see the chart and apparently Chuck was like I guess we're doing Aja again but it was Steve Gadd behind behind the skits they rehearsed it and then when they recorded it apparently that's when Steve Gadd let it rip that's why the famous story is they all stopped it's not like they were sight reading and stopped it was because they were used to the take and then he was just and that was without the Wayne Shorter sax solo because they punched that in later because that solo stitched together.

Chad (21:53.271)
Yep.

Phil DiCriscio (21:56.636)
And they just stopped, the rhythm section stopped and Steve Gadd was going at it. And I guess they picked it back up and then they just did a second take, they being...

Phil DiCriscio (22:11.964)
It's coherent, it's cohesive, it's not some of the best musicians being in all of another one of the best musicians.

Chad (22:12.873)
Yeah.

Chad (22:21.111)
Yeah. That was like my big Steely Dan gateway song when I was a young gentleman loser. I used to drive around like late at night and blast that song. You know, I guess when I was feeling sorry for myself about whatever at the time I was feeling sorry about myself about, you know, but that's just still one of my favorite songs. And I can't listen to it really that much anymore. Like I can. But like I have to be in a certain mind mind frame to listen to that, too.

Phil DiCriscio (22:22.132)
Deacon Blues.

Chad (22:49.879)
listening to the album like I'll let it play through but like if I'm shuffling just a bunch of Steely Dan stuff on a playlist or whatever and that comes on I'm skipping it lately I feel like I don't know.

Phil DiCriscio (22:59.42)
I'm similar. I do listen to it quite a bit, but I usually just listen to it. I'll either just play the song Aja or I'll listen to the album, but sometimes I'll be shuffling and Deacon Blues will come on in. And I think it's because it's that low, it's probably the slowest tune on the album. Maybe Black Cow. I don't have a BPM side by side, but either Black Cow or Deacon Blues. And it is sad. It's a sad song. It's very relatable. To me, it's...

Chad (23:06.679)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (23:28.636)
like that, things I miss the most, it's super relatable, what a shame about me, just all the sad loser songs are very relatable to me for good or for bad, but it's a great tune, just the typical, Deacon Blues is the Steely Dan character. I think maybe a Midnight Cruiser prior would be the pro -typical or a Dr. Wu maybe prior, but then Deacon Blues is just...

Chad (23:48.503)
Yeah.

Chad (23:56.447)
Yeah. Well, middle age or scotch? Yeah, whoa, hey, well.

Phil DiCriscio (23:59.068)
sad, some loser, some middle -aged loser, just wants to play the saxophone and ends up wrapping his car around a telephone pole because he's down to a fifth of whiskey. Oh, Scotch, sorry, not whiskey, Scotch. I did that meme, the Jack Daniels meme, I sent it to a buddy who's big into Steely Dan, but he's also a big bourbon whiskey guy. He went to graduate school at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, so Kentucky's right there.

Chad (24:25.187)
Oh well, okay.

Phil DiCriscio (24:26.716)
So yeah, he got a good, he said he got two educations there. So I sent him the meme and then I was like, oh, he'll laugh. And then I just got this wall of text explaining the difference between Scotch, Whiskey, and Bourbon. It's like 11 in the morning. I'm like at school, I just, I'm like, I'm gonna send my buddy a meme in between classes and then I have to learn and.

Chad (24:33.684)
hahahahah

Chad (24:44.574)
But you think it was middle -aged or you think he was just you know hitting on the other side of you know late 20s into the end of the 30s because that's where Fagen was was approaching when he wrote the song right and I feel like it was just a guy who's who's realizing he's losing his youth not necessarily an older guy looking back that's how I always read it anyway

Phil DiCriscio (25:00.06)
You're probably right. I think the problem, not the problem, but the reason I imagine middle -aged is probably just because Donald Fagen has been a 45 year old man for 76 years, or a 50 year old man for 76 years.

Chad (25:13.622)
hahahaha

Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (25:19.196)
famously when he was a kid living in um well after they moved out Pasek and I think they went to Central Jersey which does or does not exist depending on who you ask there we go but he would what he would stay up all night listening to like Symphony Sid and the other jazz radio and I mean that guys that's I mean the Nightfly is basically about that but he was some crotchety old eight -year -old and and then he met Becker in college you know when he was when Fagen was what a crotchety 20 year old he met a crotchety

Chad (25:25.688)
It absolutely exists.

Chad (25:42.2)
Yeah, total.

Chad (25:47.832)
Right.

Phil DiCriscio (25:49.052)
18 year old Walter Becker and then so all their songs like Hey 19 it is just Donald Fagen being like I can't hit on I'm 30 or I'm 28 or I'm I can't hit on you know 19 year olds anymore but it always sounds like it's a 50 year old guy and not like it's just because he's just crotchety and and which is why I think so many of us us of us younger people love love Sealy Dan because we just feel old and depressed and even though even though you know you know I'm at my job and some of the older people are like

Chad (26:12.088)
hahahaha

Phil DiCriscio (26:17.692)
Oh, what does a young person do on the weekends? I'm looking around, I'm like, are you... I listen to my jazz records, I pet my cats, and then I play video games from the 90s, like what? Okay. I wish you had that youthful spirit. Good!

Chad (26:20.536)
Yeah, like who me?

Chad (26:27.224)
My wife laughs at me because like I'll see somebody, I'm 52 right, and I'll see somebody who's like, you know, in their late 50s, early 60s, and I'm like, yeah, this old guy, and she's like, old guy, she's like, he's like our age.

Chad (26:43.032)
I don't feel my age. I don't know. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a good thing, you know. So all right. So Deacon Blues sort of segues into. Right. Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (26:48.86)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (26:53.254)
where you gotta flip and then it's it's Peg. So this this album is my one complaint about this album is I feel like the sequencing of songs is off.

Chad (27:05.312)
Aja should not have been second in my opinion. They should have saved that for maybe the opener of side two or... I don't know.

Phil DiCriscio (27:08.96)
Yeah, and I have It's over in my crate. I have an a track of Of Aja that I don't have an a track player and I have a cassette of Aja and the track listing on both of those is different from the LP and different from each other But Yes, let me actually I'm gonna grab it because that the sequencing on the cassette I think

Chad (27:26.36)
Well, that was mechanical, right? Like they had to do it a specific way to fit on a tape or A tracks were just like wacky the way they work. So.

Phil DiCriscio (27:37.584)
I can't remember it off the top of my head, but I think I like it better than the LP. Give me a second.

Chad (27:41.176)
Yeah, grab it, grab it.

Phil DiCriscio (27:58.492)
The A -Track, which I actually don't know how A -Tracks work. I assume it's a tape, but they're weird, right?

Chad (28:02.68)
It's a tape loop, right? So it's a tape loop and there are, I don't know if it's physical or it has to be physical because you'd hear it otherwise. How it changes the tracks is I think there was like a little leader splicing to the tape at certain points and that's what would make it jump to the next track. I'm not sure.

why they're tracked out the way they are and how it's laid out, but like it was like a real weird mechanism and you know they caught on for what like five years in the 70s and then they kind of died because like they sucked. Yeah, right.

Phil DiCriscio (28:34.69)
It was like it was they were the laser disc like they lost a VHS Even though laser discs are better than VHS anyway, so so on the a track starts with Aja Deacon blues like the first half and then the second half on the next so I don't know if that would be seamless or that there would be like a okay, so it would be a yeah Okay, okay

Chad (28:53.804)
Nope, there'd be like a kachunk. You would get this like kachunk and then it would change and you have like a second of silence and then the next track would kick in. So you're getting like this chunk in the middle of Aja, which is hilarious.

Phil DiCriscio (29:04.028)
Aja, Deacon Blues, the first part, Deacon Blues, the second part, Josie, which I like Josie after Deacon Blues, uh...

Chad (29:10.966)
Oh, whoa.

Phil DiCriscio (29:14.908)
news which I like that the pairing and then Peg and home

Chad (29:20.184)
Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (29:21.468)
the kachunk in there that's not a that's not a bad that's not a bad sequence and then the cassette

Chad (29:24.536)
Not a bad, yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (29:30.076)
Deacon Blues Josie.

I got the news, Peg home at last. I like that. I like home at last at last.

Chad (29:36.152)
So those are not, I do, I like that sequence, but that was neither, neither of those track sequences were an artistic decision that was consciously made. This was an economy decision or an economic decision made by the record company because they wanted to fit as much as they could on as little tape as possible to save production costs, right? So they sort of like, you know, compress the songs into the right order to make them.

Phil DiCriscio (29:46.588)
No. Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (29:55.012)
Yes.

Chad (30:02.872)
you know, as even as possible for side A, side B on the cassette and however the eight track loop worked, I guess they'd save tape somehow doing it that way too. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (30:13.724)
I usually don't like albums that are side A, side B. I kinda like a flow, even if you have to flip it. And I think there's something to be said about a nice bombastic, like, peg, a nice -

Chad (30:17.88)
Right.

Phil DiCriscio (30:23.932)
But with Aja, those first three tracks are these longer jazz odysseys, especially with Aja. You got the heavy -handed, not heavy -handed, but the heavy emotional nature of Black Cow and Home at Last. And then you got Side B, which...

Phil DiCriscio (30:41.402)
It's fun and jazzy and bluesy. You have Home at Last, which is... It's kind of sad because it's just like about life sucking and accepting it, which I guess is fine. And then you have I Got the News, which is about things that we could or we may or may not need to talk about. I would just refer to the lyrics, Spanish Kissin'. And then Josie, which is, you know, even if she just got out of jail, it's a party. Right? So it's like Psy 1's like heavy -handed, not heavy -handed, but it's heavy. It's like jazz. It's...

Chad (30:52.228)
hahahahah

Phil DiCriscio (31:10.97)
solos in black cow and the Peter Chris Leap solo in Deacon Blues and the Wayne Shorter and Steve Gatton Aja. I think you have like four shorter tracks that are poppier for sure a little more radio friendly because Peg and Josie were two of the big singles I think those two in Deacon Blues. I don't know it's a weird it's like The Nightfly to me is also very side A side B and like some days I want side A but I don't want to hear that that that cover.

And then side B, it's like great, but then you have Walk Between the Raindrops at the end, which is a wonderful song, but it's way too short. So it's like it's... But you have Peg, famously Rick Marotta on drums, doing this kind of very steady, very... It's nuanced because there's out of the... So you have the opening, the kind of horn thing or the lyricon or whatever it is. And then you have the song proper. And then when it does the recapitulation of the... It slows down.

this much and there's no and they apparently because I read there was no click so Rick Marotta was so good that he could change tempi by like what two three five maybe five bpm and just and he's holding it down because that groove is the that's that snare is on constantly and then it's it's not it's a nuance like he's doing all these weird things with the cymbal and the the kick drum

Chad (32:11.318)
Yep. Yep.

Chad (32:22.288)
Right.

Chad (32:27.958)
Oh yeah, that groove is unimpeachable. Yep.

Chad (32:36.312)
Well, I was going to say the stuff he did with his hi -hat was just off the charts. I mean, like, you know, it drives the song. And if it's not there, you'd miss it, right? Like you don't really focus on it unless you know it's there. Did you ever hear the take they did with Gadd? Totally different song. Totally different groove. No.

Phil DiCriscio (32:40.316)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (32:45.372)
Yeah. I did. I was going to bring that up because I couldn't remember it. The feel. It's not bad. It's great. But the feel. Yes. For sure, like another band would take that that Gatay can be like, it's perfect. And in many cases, they would be right if it was a different band. But Fagen and Becker.

Chad (32:58.872)
It's similar. That's the funny thing is it's similar, but it's so different because it's not what Marotta played. Like it's just hard to describe.

Chad (33:09.4)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (33:15.324)
Neither classically or jazz trained. Officially Becker got some blues guitar lessons. Fagen a little bit of, a little more kind of classical training or formal training rather. But like those dudes just listen to records and had great ears and great feel and great intuition I think. They're one of the most intuitive bands. And I think...

Phil DiCriscio (33:39.996)
If we have time, we might have to, this might be a two -parter, frankly, because we're spending, and I'm planning on doing an Aja podcast. I'm trying to hold things back. Yeah.

Chad (33:43.352)
Okay. Well, why don't we stop here? I we said enough about Aja. We can move on because let's not ruin your episode and let's... Yeah. We're half out.

Phil DiCriscio (33:55.004)
And time because we're already one an hour in I Just it's just it's one of those things. It's a great album sounds great playing is great songwriting is great

It just checks all these boxes. And at the end of the day, they're just seven wonderful.

Phil DiCriscio (34:16.332)
feels as the kids would say or or pathos or ethos or vibes anyway Aja listen to it listen to

Chad (34:19.736)
vibes. It's one of the best albums. Yeah. All right.

Phil DiCriscio (34:27.324)
Yeah, I'm having, yeah. So let me put, that's the -

Chad (34:28.952)
It's one of the best albums ever made full stop that that's it like there's there's nothing else to say. Yeah

Phil DiCriscio (34:31.836)
Yes, yes, yes, when I see lists and it's like best audiophile albums for the 70s, I saw one today and I didn't see like Aja wasn't on it. I'm like, this is bullshit. It had like, it had like rumors, which is great. And it had, it had like Led Zeppelin 4, which is a fine album, but it's not like an audio file album. Is it?

Chad (34:40.152)
Hmm. Yeah.

Chad (34:53.824)
I'm trying to think. I don't know if it's the same caliber as like in Aja, but it's the recording is, you know what it is, is there's a lot of innovation happening. Like we can talk about Zeppelin a different day, but like Jimmy Page was almost like a Fagen where he was so involved in the recording and the mixing and the engineering. Like he was very specific about how he wanted things laid down.

Phil DiCriscio (34:55.676)
Look, it sounds good, but it's not.

Phil DiCriscio (35:02.318)
It's It's great.

Chad (35:19.48)
Um, you know, uh, it's not zeppelin four, but what's the song? Um, uh, killy's last stand has like 150 guitar overdubs or something crazy like that on it. It might not be, it might not be that many. It might be less, but yeah, I forget. Yeah. No, it's not into the outdoor. It's, it's either houses. I forget what album it's on, but like that kind of stuff. Like, you know, he did like all these weird, like reverse tape loop echoes on songs and, you know, he, he did a lot of pioneering in some of the ways and stuff.

Phil DiCriscio (35:27.746)
Is that what it was? That was was that houses of the whole physical graffiti? It's one of the later ones. It's not in through the outdoor.

Chad (35:50.744)
I can see them putting Zeppelin on that list, even though it's not what we would consider audiophile.

Phil DiCriscio (35:54.716)
Yeah. Cool.

Chad (35:56.706)
So what's your first other album?

Phil DiCriscio (35:58.62)
So I didn't get to this when you -

Chad (36:03.664)
No, not really. So your albums and you know, I'm not going to spoil them. I'll let you tee them up. But like, you know, a couple of your albums, I know a bunch of songs off them, but there's songs that I've never heard. And I went and listened to most of what I could, you know, get in before we recorded. And you know, I'm going to have to go back and revisit that decision.

Phil DiCriscio (36:04.252)
But you say.

Phil DiCriscio (36:23.932)
I have always been

Phil DiCriscio (36:27.932)
this first

the first band I fell in love with you because their past 20 years have not been great.

Phil DiCriscio (36:41.116)
something about the

Phil DiCriscio (36:45.916)
me especially when I was younger and actually Pink Floyd does not make the top five it makes top ten but I would like listen to the like Dark Side front to back constantly Animals which is my favorite Pink Floyd album front to back cost and the whole concept album kind of sphere I think interested me

Chad (37:03.896)
There are certain albums to me that are albums that I have to listen to the whole thing or I love to listen to the whole thing. I know every song, every note, but it's just, you know, I do that with very specific artists or albums that I've known and loved for different reasons, but just, you know, especially in the age of Spotify, it's just, it's hard for me to sit and focus for an hour and listen to a whole album back to front.

Phil DiCriscio (37:20.208)
Yeah Yeah, for sure that's part of the reason I got back into listening to my record collection because there's something about the process of taking it out Cleaning it putting it on the platter pulling the knee of listening flipping watch me anyway The the intention behind it I am a fan of so the first record I ever fell in love with I was 9 or 10 when I received it Which means that would have been 2004 or 5?

Chad (37:28.568)
Yep.

Chad (37:35.799)
It's intentional, yeah. Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (37:49.026)
Green Day's Dookie. 1994, I believe, Green Day's Dookie. I knew the hits going into this, Long V Welcome to Paradise, Batskate Case, etc., which predicated me getting it for like a Christmas or birthday gift, and I just fell in love with it. You know, it's a pop, it's pop, pop punk. It's a pop, it's all these albums except for one I consider pop albums on some level, and I think it's that helps the ease of listening experience.

catchy upbeat tunes. So this is Green Days, depending on how you think about it, second or third album, first album on a major label, prior to that they were on Reprise or Reprise.

They were East Bay punk band formed in 89, trio of bratty kids.

out style east bay punk or the mr t experience or those kind of groups ended up doing a bunch of eps that were then this is why i say second or third full album that were then compiled into 1039 smoothed out slappy hours and then they did kerplunk which has the first version of welcome to paradise the original and then they got signed to a major label and they hooked up with rob cavallo who was uh i'm not sure

Phil DiCriscio (39:11.612)
other albums he's worked on but he was like a real producer and they are a big or a mainstream producer and they came out with Dookie I mean from the get -go this cover art a big cartoon I mean there's monkeys throwing poop there's there's a dog driving a plane that's dropping poop bombs there's some Ozzy Osbourne looking guy on right here or not maybe not Ozzy but the the kind of witch thing from the first Sabbath album is there on the back cover if the original presses of

Chad (39:13.004)
Yeah.

Chad (39:21.776)
Yeah, I love the cover of that.

Phil DiCriscio (39:41.296)
I'm not sure if they were CDs or vinyl, because this was 94, so I'm not sure if it was CDs or vinyl or cassette. The original pressing, where it looks all black in the middle, there was a... Elmo or an Ernie plush, like a big plush that these kids were throwing around, and then it came out like that, and then the Jim Henson company was like, not on this album that has songs about...

Chad (39:45.336)
CD, I bought the CD, yeah.

Chad (40:02.398)
Ah.

Phil DiCriscio (40:10.692)
self -pleasure to say the least has songs about mental hospitals has songs about uh Well coming clean is about billy billy joel Not billy joel billy joe the the singer and and lead songwriter and guitarist coming out about being bisexual which 1994 as a male Pretty gutsy. Um, I don't know. It's it's how many tracks two four six eight ten twelve So it's fourteen tracks, but it only clocks in about 40 minutes because they're they're

Chad (40:11.03)
hahahaha

Chad (40:28.31)
Yeah, that was a big thing. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (40:40.412)
It's very Ramones influence in terms of chainsaw fast, razor fast, quick pug songs. But it's a... Yes.

Chad (40:47.797)
It's melodic. A lot of their songs are, you know, and that's what I think I appreciated about that album when it came out. I was 22. I'm probably I probably saw the video. I was very into MTV. You know, that was sort of the end of MTV by that point. But, you know, they stopped playing videos and stuff. But like when the video came out for Longview, I just remember seeing Billy Joe Armstrong and just how he stood, how he slung his guitar really low. And he had like that that Johnny Rotten sneer.

Phil DiCriscio (41:04.026)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (41:15.61)
Yeah!

Chad (41:16.102)
And it was like an affectation looking back on it. But at the time I was like, huh, like these guys are kind of channeling the 70s punk shit that I listened to growing up, like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the Dead Kennedys. Like they had that kind of that kind of vibe and I liked it. You know, I really liked that album.

Phil DiCriscio (41:34.214)
It's, I love it, I think it's, people will say Nimrod's their best. Nimrod was two albums after this, it's longer. There's more, some of the songs, there's like a, there's a, what is it, King for a Day is like a ska tune, so there's a horn section. That's the one that has Time of Your Life on it, which is the big, but I don't know, these are 14 tight tracks, just about, you know, the first track is Burnout, it's about, once again, it's the same, it's the same.

Chad (41:49.364)
Okay.

Chad (41:57.62)
Yeah. Right.

Phil DiCriscio (41:59.356)
It's like Steely Dan thing. It's a 20 year old or however, he was probably, they were probably 20 when they recorded Green Day, just like already being sick of everything and being jaded and being, and I probably shouldn't have listened to that one when I was 10, because that probably set my life up for disappointment. But no, it's just.

Chad (42:15.06)
Hahaha!

Phil DiCriscio (42:17.466)
You know, the big tracks, Longview, Welcome to Paradise, Bass, K, She, When I Come Around. But then, like I said, the deep cuts, Burnout, Having a Blast, Chump, which is just about a loser. But the end is a big kind of drum and bass, just kind of extended jam that then there's no space between the tracks. It leads right into Longview. So it's kind of, that was my first introduction to like one track beating into the other. Once again, the second recording of Welcome to Paradise, the first one being on...

Chad (42:20.084)
. . .

Chad (42:42.196)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (42:47.214)
Kirk Plunkett from 92 or 93 and it's just better in every way. I mean it's produced better. Mike Dirt gets to show a lot more of his bass kind of prowess because he's a great bass player and all these albums except the jazz one is kind of a different story. Just all great bass playing, all great rhythm sections. It's all just tight rhythm sections which looking back I don't think I appreciate as much as I do now.

Chad (42:57.044)
Oh yeah, yeah, he is a great bass player.

Phil DiCriscio (43:12.988)
Aja being the benchmark for a tight rhythm section. But Trey Cool and Mike Durnt on this thing are just holding it down. And it's groovy and it just goes and it's not, it's sneery, it is punk sneery, but it's, look, to me, Green Day is more, at least this era of Green Day is more legitimate and down to earth and real, like realer than like a Sex Pistols, which...

was were manufactured by some clothing store guy, you know, famously and they had a great bass player and then they fired him for some heroin addict who ended up killing himself and his girlfriend. Well, I mean, I mean through, you know, exposure to, you know, heroin. But this this is more it's, you know, it's it's bratty kids being upset, but the songwriting is intelligent. The hooks are catchy.

Chad (43:48.309)
said.

Chad (43:51.861)
Alright, well, we don't know.

Phil DiCriscio (44:08.316)
the background, the Billy Joe's lead vocals and Mike Durant doing the high harmony, it's very Van Halen of them. It's, I'll watch how they call it, it's a music theory term where...

Chad (44:14.261)
Oh, I was going to say the harmonies are fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (44:22.446)
Oblique motion where one voice in this case literally a voice but it could be an instrument stays on one pitch and then another one either above or below and that's Mike dirt is just Rock, you know, he's like Michael Anthony for Van Halen. He's just rock rock solid and Billy Joe gets to do his thing and then Mike dear will move down with the cord and that Billy it's it's It's a great it's tight without being clinical

Chad (44:44.405)
Yeah, it's well executed. It's yeah. And yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (44:50.652)
and I think the thing that kills punk rock, and I'm not saying it has to sound crappy, but you can never have the Aja of punk rock. And that's okay. That's not the point. But it's a clean album, it's a great...

You know, because of Green Day, I got into bands like The Descendants, The Adolescents, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Ramones. Like I heard of Green Day before I heard of the Ramones and I've read an interview with Billy Joe's like, yeah, listen to those first couple Ramones albums. And then, you know, in real life today, is it over here? Today just came in the mail. I got the 33 and 3 Ramones. Yeah, I, yeah. So it's one of those albums that just...

Chad (45:28.851)
Nice.

Chad (45:34.483)
Is it on the first album of the book? Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (45:36.604)
Yes, yes. I like Leave Home as far as Ramones go. I like the second one, Leave Home. It's a little poppier and it's, the songs I think are a little stronger. And it's mixed better. On the first Ramones album, the original mix, the guitar is in one channel and the bass is in another channel. And then, so Spotify has a billion versions of the first Ramones album and it's like the 40th anniversary mix that fixes that and makes it not gross. Cause it's so, that's out of, that's, anyway.

But before we move on to you, I love inserts in records. So, Lyric Sheets and you know, it kind of continues that whole vibe of kind of the comic book art. Nice handwritten lyrics. And that just... It was, for a while when I was a kid, before my basement flooded and I lost. Like I had a first pressing of Fresh Fruit, Frying, Vegetables. Gone. With the poster in it. Gone. I had a color vinyl of Slayers' first album. Gone. I've since learned to keep my records up. Anyway.

Chad (46:05.651)
Yes, me too.

Chad (46:14.579)
Yeah, I feel like that was in the CD too, I remember that.

Phil DiCriscio (46:32.604)
Uh, but no, I had a bunch of, I had all the Green Dayz albums for a while and this was in it. But you know, just like, come on, these are kids, you know, just, just living life and they got lucky with a record deal and turns out they're, I think, fantastic musicians, especially that rhythm section. Billy Joe just writes some really still to me relatable lyrics, you know, since before I was that age and since, you know, I was eight years before that age and now I'm eight years past or nine years past that age. Um, and it's...

It's a great album, but to me it's more important because of what it represented in terms of broadening my musical horizons, getting into punk, which then led me into bands like the Smiths and Joy Division. And I had a phase of, and we'll get to this with your artists, I had a phase of like Sonic Youth and the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. and R .E .M., bands that I would love to revisit. I just don't have the time of the day. So they were just an important band for broadening, because before that it was Led Zeppelin Pink Floyd Van Halen. Great bands, but...

Like, this has more to do with what it means to me than a listening experience, even though I still contend it's a wonderful album, eight out of ten, nine out of ten, like it's, for what it set out to do, it accomplished flawlessly.

Chad (47:33.843)
Yeah, there's so much more out there.

Chad (47:47.955)
Yes, agreed. And it spoke to me who was pretty much the same age as those guys ish when that came out because it really hits on that like Gen X slacker, you know, like it, it, it, yep. Yeah. They, they, they talk about it on one of the, one of the episodes of being with Simba head, I think. Yeah, they actually, and I forget what the verdict was. I'm sure they said, Oh, this sucks, but you know, whatever.

Phil DiCriscio (47:58.524)
Yes, MTV generation are coming in like very, it's very Beavis and Butthead. Long View is so, because Long View is all about, you know, wasting a day, getting high. They do, that's right.

Phil DiCriscio (48:16.252)
Well, so what of your albums are you going to talk about first? Because I have notes.

Chad (48:22.003)
I don't have any cool show and tell props because I don't have any of my favorite albums on vinyl except for the ones I've just started collecting this year, but I do. Yeah, right. Exactly. That's nowhere near as cool as a vinyl collection, by the way. Nowhere near. This doesn't come close. Well, now my wife and my daughter are cool, but the house and yeah, no, fuck that. Yeah, yeah, not fun.

Phil DiCriscio (48:28.636)
Yes, but you own a house, so like... And have a family, I have cats and... My record -

Phil DiCriscio (48:39.548)
Oh, she doesn't watch this.

Phil DiCriscio (48:45.02)
Yeah mortgage nah

Chad (48:48.981)
But I do have all my CDs. I just didn't have time to like, you know, go into crawl space and get all dirty trying to find them. And they're in there and I have all the CD like those, you know, the books that you flip through. I put everything into those years ago and they're just in a box someplace in my crawl space. So I got to get them out one day because I think it'll be fun to go through and find the stuff that I forgot I have. So anyway, without without the visual aids.

Phil DiCriscio (48:52.5)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (49:00.284)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (49:09.34)
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Chad (49:13.748)
One of the albums I wanted to talk about today was the debut by Lloyd Cole and the commotions and the name of the album is Rattlesnakes from 1984. I got into Lloyd Cole late. I didn't know who he was, never heard the commotions. They weren't real big in the US. In fact, I don't think they really charted or had any success here or almost, you know, none. Yeah. Yeah, I think they're fairly obscure.

Phil DiCriscio (49:33.244)
before you told me about them? Never, never heard, never heard of them.

Chad (49:40.468)
here. In the UK, they were pretty big. You know, they were on top of the pops. And, you I think they had some charting singles and their albums were, you know, were always played and stuff like that. But yeah, I think here they were largely overlooked, which is a damn shame because it's some of the best songwriting. They only put out three albums, right? So they were they were around from 84 to 89. I first got introduced to them, I think it was the summer of 1990, I want to say it might have been 91. But one of those two years,

And I grew up in Atlantic City down in South Jersey and I had a bunch of friends that had, you know, come over from Ireland for the summer. So they had like this whole great different set of artists and music that they were into that I, you know, things I'd never heard of. So my one friend, Donal got me into Lloyd Cole, got me into prefab sprout, got me into the la’s, got me into Kirsty McColl, got me, I mean, Suzanne Vegas and American.

Chad (50:39.797)
obviously, but like I wasn't really a big fan of her because you know that song Luka was like great song I mean love it now but like at a time it was kind of like okay my name is Luka you know wasn't it wasn't a big fan of it when it was a current song but he turned me on to her earlier stuff before that and I was just like wow you know how did I miss all this right so Lloyd Cole and the commotions I think he had the cassette of their greatest hits album which is just called 84 to 89 and it's got all the hits plus

Phil DiCriscio (50:44.22)
Yeah.

Chad (51:09.301)
re -recorded version of a song on a couple of B -sides or on release tracks or whatever. So he lent me a copy. You know, of course I made myself a dub of it so I could listen to it. And it just blew me away. Like from the opening track, I hadn't heard anything like this before. I from a musical perspective, jangly guitars, first album's a little bit sparse. If you listen to their second and third albums, they get a little more developed in terms of...

Phil DiCriscio (51:29.902)
you

Chad (51:36.85)
instrumentation and composition, but not to say that there's anything missing from the first album. It's just brilliant. It's you know, Lloyd is one of the my favorite songwriters because he's so literate and he paints pictures with words, right? And a lot of songwriters do that, but especially him.

Phil DiCriscio (51:56.7)
For sure, so like I said, first time ever heard of Lloyd Cole, I gave this a listen once or twice. Immediately looking at my notes, the first thing I wrote was, higher fidelity Velvet Underground. It's that kind of proto art rock thing that the Velvets did. Very interesting lyrics, but with higher production value. To me, this album and the rest of yours...

Chad (52:08.276)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (52:25.756)
are very college rock, if not directly, if not directly, it's like Steely Dan, Steely Dan, Yacht Rock, Yes No.

Chad (52:30.58)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (52:34.532)
Maybe they're not maybe loy coles in college rock, but it's so the jangly guitars The kind of tight song rang is to me very early REM very dinosaur jr. Very pixies very sonic youth very all this group and you know sonically it doesn't sound maybe the same but just Exists in that world I also find a lot of similarity with loy coles and and the smiths in terms of the the jangly guitar sound the the lyrics about life while loy coles is more put together and less emotional than Morrissey so that's good

Chad (52:56.244)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (53:04.398)
good thing. I was really interested in the sound. What I really like, because you hear plenty of bands with Jagley guitars and songs about, you know, or literate songs, songs about life. There's that organ throughout the whole thing. Is that a Wurlitzer or what is that?

Chad (53:20.723)
Yes.

Wurlitzer, Hammond, I'm not sure which, but it makes some of the songs. It's very unique.

Phil DiCriscio (53:28.412)
It's unique, cause bands that sound like this don't have organs. They maybe will have a trumpet on a track, but do not have organs. And I looked it up and apparently, Louis Cole was influenced by Bob Dylan, which you get a lot through the lyrics and kind of the delivery, but at Booker T and the MGs. And that's the organ, that is green earrings. It's just his green earrings with aggression.

Chad (53:47.444)
Yeah. Yeah.

He was into the soul stuff. I think he was really into R &B and like, you know, that, that sort of stuff. I think he, he lists those, those types of bands as influences. So yeah, that's, that makes total sense. And he was friends with Morrissey. They actually hung out and like, uh, yeah. So Lloyd's, Lloyd's right. I think they were basically doing that.

Phil DiCriscio (54:06.492)
Really? I mean, the timeline makes sense, because 84 was the first Smith album.

Chad (54:13.619)
with Top of the Pops and you know all the the British TV shows that had all the artists on them at that time. I think they were sort of in that same circle but Lloyd's still around he's been making so when the commotions broke up he started doing solo albums which he's been

Phil DiCriscio (54:14.896)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (54:23.78)
Okay.

Chad (54:30.321)
putting out an album every few years since like 1990. And they're all, yeah, they're pretty much all great. Like the first three or four are just fabulous. And then, you know, he got a little more experimental, I think, and tried to branch out and do new things. But he's still recording and he's still playing. In fact, he's touring. I'm not sure where he is right now. I think he's in Europe somewhere. But

Phil DiCriscio (54:33.18)
Really?

Chad (54:47.731)
But the funny thing is a couple of years ago during the pandemic, he started a Patreon because he was like, shit, you know, I can't tour right now and I'm losing money and you know, whatever. And I want to stay in front of my fans. So he started the Patreon and apparently he took like very meticulous notes while writing things with the commotions and then later on in his solo career, but also kept a lot of notes about like what was going on with the band. So like tour dates and you know, who owed him money and you know, receipts for like a shirt that he bought that the record company

Phil DiCriscio (55:08.732)
Oh, okay.

Chad (55:17.637)
paid him back for because he wore it on TV. Like, you know, shit like that, right? Like just this little effluvia of his life. But it's so interesting, especially when you're invested in an artist the way that I am with Lloyd and the commotions in his solo work.

Phil DiCriscio (55:22.66)
Yeah!

Chad (55:32.243)
Oh, so the point is, he actually scanned a letter that Morrissey wrote him and it was like, yeah, it was like, hey Lloyd, how's it going? Sorry I missed you and whatever, whatever it might've been, but it was just like, they were like pen pals and shit when they weren't hanging out in person. So it's kind of cool. And I've seen him play, how many times now? I think twice. Yeah, I saw him once in the 90s and then I saw him solo right before the pandemic. It was like the fall of 29.

Phil DiCriscio (55:37.116)
Oh!

Chad (56:02.22)
He was actually playing a little music venue in Jersey that was, it's like, it's a church, but they use it for music, I guess, at nights and weekends. Yeah, it was great. And it was just him and a guitar. And it was fucking amazing. It was like five pews back from the stage. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (56:09.34)
Yeah, cool.

Phil DiCriscio (56:14.02)
Yeah!

Oh, that's awesome. I made a note here that, and like I said, I have not had time to sit down with, even though it's such a short discography, but I am intrigued. I made a note here. If I heard Lloyd Cole before I heard the Smiths, I might be a bigger Lloyd Cole fan, or I might have been. It fills a lot of things that Maury Morrissey wrote and did musically.

There's similarity in Lori Cole. I think Lori Cole's a little rougher around the edges. It's kind of that more college rock kind of REM sound, which I love. But the Warlitzer, the... It's a song about, at least from what I could glean, a lot of these songs are about failed or problematic relationships, which is... Black cow. Or great songs are about great relationships. I got the news. Anyway. But I did write down one lyric that stuck with me, and I didn't note what song it is, and you'll know.

Chad (56:57.46)
Oh yeah. Well, isn't the best music about that?

Phil DiCriscio (57:11.548)
Do you want to go to heaven or would you rather not be saved?

Chad (57:16.052)
Oh God, what song is that from?

Phil DiCriscio (57:17.148)
I think it's on one of the middle tracks.

Chad (57:20.34)
I feel like it's one of the later tracks. Now I gotta find out, because that doesn't, I know the lyric, but I can't tell you what song it's from. Yeah, okay, go ahead. So while you're doing that, let me just also make a recommendation.

Phil DiCriscio (57:24.508)
Here, let me just type it in real quick.

Chad (57:32.335)
Listen to the second album by the commotions easy pieces and their last album, which is called mainstream, ha ha Which is kind of funny like they were smart asses too They were like, you know Lloyd's very sort of cynical and sarcastic, which maybe I'm just drawn to that kind of music fuck I don't know But they they get away from the jangle and they like I said, they build the compositions in the instrumentation So like, you know, they're they're more organs. There's string sections that are a little bit deeper There's horns on the opening track of the second album. There's horns on the songs too, but like

Phil DiCriscio (57:56.89)
Okay.

Chad (58:02.151)
like it's one of my favorite horn pieces of theirs. So definitely dig deeper because they get, I don't wanna say they get better, but they get more fully realized. Does that make sense?

Phil DiCriscio (58:12.348)
Okay, yeah, and I do, you know, I appreciate some extra production, some... And we'll get to that with one of these albums very much in particular. I like extra horns and strings and just extra...

You know, I mean, and I love punk rock, and I love simplicity, but there's something to be said about fine production and just adding more material to a song because you can do it and it sounds good and it sounds natural and it doesn't sound forced. And I would like that because I love his bass level of songwriting and their playing, I think, is phenomenal. So just more of that with some extra symphonic elements, I think, would be up my alley. The song is, it's a, So You'd Like To Save The World.

Chad (58:32.168)
Yeah.

Chad (58:51.222)
That's not on rattlesnakes. That's on one of his solo albums.

Phil DiCriscio (58:52.956)
What was I listening to?

Phil DiCriscio (58:57.148)
No, no, no, sorry, sorry, Charlotte Street. Sorry, I was looking at YouTube because he has a song, so you'd like to say, okay, sorry, Charlotte Street. Yeah, and I was listening to that and I was like, oh, and I had to go back. I'm like, that's a, I like how direct it is, but it could also be interpreted so many ways.

Chad (59:00.694)
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad (59:07.317)
Yes, yes, yes, Charlotte Street, yes.

Chad (59:19.157)
My favorite lyric of his, I think of all time, if not just on that album, is in the song, Four Flights Up, and the lyric is, must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing? Like, holy shit, like, ow! That just hurts.

Phil DiCriscio (59:27.708)
Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (59:32.988)
Yes, I, yeah, that... Yeah, like reading the lyrics and, you know, I was kind of listening to it sporadically as long as I have the lyrics up, but I was amazed with, he's writing things, he's writing about things that I felt, but puts it in such a succinct way without being pedantic. Like, do you want to go to heaven or would you rather not be saved? It's like, that's kind of a normal sentiment, but it's, it rolls off the tongue.

Chad (59:52.053)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:00:01.34)
It's it's it makes you think but it also makes you feel immediately It's like a Steely Dan like you can listen to some of those lyrics and kind of get it Some of the songs I mean some of the songs are cryptic as hell, but you know like a midnight cruiser. You can kind of get Like the vibe of it and then you like think about it and like

Oh, he said felonious, who does he mean? Now is there a jazz thing or like a Parker's band? It's like, oh, it's about Charlie Parker. And then like, it's like, I wonder what being bareback on an armadillo means. And you realize Charlie Parker just just rode a horse down the street of New York because he was Charlie Parker and he could.

Chad (01:00:27.605)
Alright.

Chad (01:00:34.229)
Well, Steely Dan and Lloyd Cole have one big thing in common for me and they, and this is before the internet, mind you, like they, they made me want to learn more about the references because there are so many references to films and books and, and everything else. Right. So, you know, Charlie Parker, did I know who Charlie Parker was when I was a kid listening to Steely Dan? No. Did I know, you know, where Rudy's was like, there's so many elements of Steely Dan songs that like it's, it's lore to many, but there are real places.

Phil DiCriscio (01:00:48.22)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (01:00:59.898)
Yes.

Chad (01:01:04.136)
and people and books and movies and things like that right and even if you don't even if they're not explicit like signing stranger was inspired by some sci -fi book right and I forgot the name of it now but like I'm gonna go read that at some point because it's you know I want to read what Fagen read right and same thing with Lloyd Cole like you know same song four flights up it's you know you came

I forgot the full lyric, but it's like you came something into town and a beat up Grace Kelly car. Like I knew who Grace Kelly was, but what do you mean beat up Grace Kelly car? And I looked it up and like whatever car she had, you know, like it's so, it's so funny to me that like a lot of my.

Phil DiCriscio (01:01:34.806)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad (01:01:41.207)
Cultural education comes from music because I you know, what the hell is Kirschwasser, right? And I didn't know that until years later. What's a piaster? You know, I asked my sister that I think when I was a teenager listening to Katie Lied I'm like, you know, do you know what a piaster isn't she like? Yeah, it's it's Dutch money and I'm like, huh, but he's in Miami and she's like, I know You know

Phil DiCriscio (01:01:46.204)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:01:56.444)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it speaks something of a great artist where the little daily occurrences and observations that we, that us mortals just kind of, okay, you know, oh, that's, you know, that colored car or that happened. And then it's a great artist that can kind of take these basic or forgettable observations and kind of tie that or turn that into something.

significant lyrically or meaning wise and if Fagen Fagen becker did that apparently lori koh has done that um

Morrissey kinda did that on some level. Yeah, like I said, never heard of them. I also find it interesting that two of your choices, and I think you're talking about four albums, Aja being one, I'm talking about five, two of yours are British. And...

I'm not saying you have to like American music or British, but I just think that's interesting that like, cause I'm all minor American. I mean, Fagen & Becker are aliens, but they were born in New York, New Jersey, so they count. But I only have one British band and you have two. And that the aesthetics between your two choices and my British choice from the same timeframe, very similar. It's like two sides of the same aesthetic. I just, I find.

Chad (01:03:06.548)
Hahaha.

Chad (01:03:16.788)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:03:23.004)
I found that interesting when I was looking up these artists and learning and listening. There's probably something there, but that would mean a deep dive of so many different groups, catalogs, and a study of mid -1980s British culture, and just a lot. Yeah, but awesome album. I recommend it. It will be on my short list to revisit for sure.

Chad (01:03:47.893)
Nice. Well, why don't we do one more of yours and then that'll put us probably closer an hour and a half. And then I think we can maybe hit pause and come back for part two and finish up the rest. What do you think? All right.

Phil DiCriscio (01:03:57.02)
Cool. That sounds great. So the first album I fell in love with was Green day's Dookie. In the interim, a couple Van Halen records, a couple Pink Floyd records. But an album, and then a couple punk albums, you know, those first couple Descendants albums, the Adolescents Blue album, all the things. But an album I listened to, or a band I first discovered when I was about 16, 15 or 16, so that would have been early, mid high school.

Band I never heard of, album I never heard of, and then one of my friends turned me on to it. The band is the Smiths, the album. 1986 is I believe the Queen is Dead. Just got this in the mail this morning. I overnight shipped this from Amazon so I would have a prop. And I also wanted it on vinyl. Awesome gay fold, love lyrics, love seeing a picture of the band. And then, oops.

Chad (01:04:31.062)
Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (01:04:47.868)
And then, because I'm out of those anti -static sleeves, I have to order some more. My record's still in the thing, and I'm not happy about that. But just weird kind of insert sleeve that just has who did what on... Or who plays what and who engineered whatever. But the Queen is Dead is, I believe, 10 tracks. And it's the Smiths. Yeah, um...

Chad (01:05:07.895)
produced that? Does say who the producer is?

Phil DiCriscio (01:05:13.788)
Well, Morrissey and Marr, but it's engineered by Stephen Street. Yeah.

Chad (01:05:16.853)
Stephen Street. Okay, I feel like Stephen Street worked on commotion stuff too, I want to say. I might be wrong on that, but I feel like he did.

Phil DiCriscio (01:05:22.332)
I see Ivaros - Ivaros snakes pulled up here.

Phil DiCriscio (01:05:27.452)
not on this album, but Ric Ocasek did some mixing who was what? He was the Cars guy, right? That's that first album by the Cars, it's great. But The Queen is Dead is the third of four Smith Studio albums. 86. What I find interesting about the Smiths as a band isn't really the lyrical content, it's just, you know, Morrissey's some moody.

Chad (01:05:30.347)
Yeah.

Yep.

Oh yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:05:50.81)
20 -something who just hates going outside and he likes flowers and riding his bicycle and Johnny Maher is this guitar god who would just write the jangliest most intricate guitar parts and then backed by once again a super tight rhythm section of Andy Rorick on bass who just passed away and Mike Joyce on drums so you kind of have this this tight rhythm section that lets Maher and Morrissey kind of do their thing. What I find interesting about the Smiths is that makes them different from an American band at the time.

You know, in the 70s, I think there was this prevalence with AOR, album -oriented rock. That was very much an American thing, but Led Zeppelin also added to that, so did Pink Floyd. But from what I'm aware of, in the 70s and mid -80s, in England, it was very much a singles game still. So, listening to the Smiths is weird, because they have four studio albums.

which should be like, okay, they have four, but there's so many singles and B -sides that made it onto like compilations, most famously Half Wolf Hollow, which came out in between the first and second Smith's album. And then there's like a British only compilation and which is, oh shoot, what is it? The world won't listen. And then there's the American Louder Than Bombs or vice versa. And they're kind of the same, except they're kind of different. So, and then there's all these hiatus.

So the Smiths, it's like, you can listen to those four albums, but you're missing half the catalog. It's not a huge catalog. But The Queen is Dead, I think it's just 10 tracks, 10 awesome tracks. Stand Out.

Chad (01:07:25.976)
So why is it your favorite out of the Smiths albums?

Phil DiCriscio (01:07:33.244)
Well, the first one's the first one, the Smiths, which was 1980, I guess that would have been four. You know, it has first album syndrome. Playing's not super tight. Some of the songs aren't the best. Meets as a Murder, I like. That's 85. It's strong. It's some people's favorite. What, for me, it's still lacking.

Some of the songwriting I think is lacking. Like they have great ideas, but the songs don't deliver. You have like Rush Home Ruffians, which I think is quite good. And then you have the Headmaster Ritual. But then you get to the end of the album and Side B just kind of, it just gets tired.

Like there's not the there's the sound is great. The playing is great, but there's there's not really variety. And then the one the one song that has variety on the album is the last song, Meet is Murder, which is a fine song. But it's all about Morrissey's veganism, which I'm not anti like I don't.

You know whatever, but it's like you're listening to an album and then you just hear like saws and like animal screaming and which I don't think is real actual slaughterhouse audio I think it's like studio because it sounds fake And then he's just kind of crying and it's like I get it dude. I love animals. I sometimes consider you know being vegetarian or vegan because you know I feel guilty but at the same time like

Chad (01:08:53.208)
Yeah.

Chad (01:09:02.68)
Well, hey, every every lot of the bands in that time had to make some kind of political statement or you know, some societal statement, right? I don't don't fault him for that. But can I just? Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:09:10.844)
No, no, and I can't be mad, but because they were dealing with Thatcher and we were dealing with Reagan, like what's the, you know, who's worse?

Chad (01:09:15.416)
All right, yeah. I'll tell you one thing. I came to the Smiths really late, relatively in life. I hated the Smiths in high school when they were out.

Phil DiCriscio (01:09:27.3)
Fair. Understandable.

Chad (01:09:30.327)
Well, I was so into, I was into hip hop and punk and heavy metal and, you know, I didn't, I mean, I didn't even like stuff like Zeppelin and Van Halen and stuff until I was a little bit older. It was kind of, you know, and that was, I mean, I liked 1984, right? Cause that was like the, the, the pop Van Halen album, if you will. But, um, and I think this is kind of a funny story, but there are these two guys that I went to school with and they were like obsessed.

and I mean obsessed with the Smiths, like posters in their rooms, bought every album, bought all the fanzines, all they would talk about was the only band they would listen to, like it was their whole identity, these two. And I didn't like either one of those guys, like I was just, I had a couple classes with a few of them and one kid was in a bunch of my classes in high school and I couldn't stand him. And I feel bad because, you know, like we were friends but more like frenemies kind of thing, I don't know. Anyway, all that to say is,

Phil DiCriscio (01:10:18.798)
Yeah.

Chad (01:10:22.966)
Because of that, it kind of turned me off. And even though I was into the harder stuff, I was still into the more sensitive stuff. Like I played the Violent Femmes on repeat, although Violent Femmes were like punk. They were punk, I'm sorry. I don't care what anybody says. They were punk bands. They were just an acoustic punk band, right?

Phil DiCriscio (01:10:25.242)
Mmm.

Phil DiCriscio (01:10:36.38)
Jason.

Okay.

Hmm.

Chad (01:10:44.405)
So like, you know, I was into other things in that genre, but I just for some reason couldn't get my head around the Smiths. And I think it was because I just had such a bad taste in my mouth for the two people that were obsessed with them. So fast forward until, you know, college and right after, and then I forgot how I turned back around and got into them. Oh, I know. In college, there was a song that came out, I think it was 1990 by a band called Soho, one hit wonder. The song was called Hippie Chick.

Phil DiCriscio (01:10:54.268)
That, no, that's... That's understandable.

Phil DiCriscio (01:11:13.98)
Okay. I've heard the name, I'm not sure I can recognize it.

Chad (01:11:14.133)
Have you ever heard this song? So it samples the guitar riff from How Soon Is Now. And I rem...

Phil DiCriscio (01:11:21.212)
Oh, oh, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad (01:11:23.253)
And I remember playing it like on repeat. I think I even had that. And you know, here a funny tape thing. I had a single cassette. I know for a thousand percent, I know I had the single for Hippie Chick. I played it over and over and over again. And this guy, Glenn, who lived on my dorm hall, you know, he liked the song too. And I was just like, yeah, that guitar part. I don't know how they came up with that guitar part. He goes, they didn't come up with that. He goes, that's the Smiths. And I'm like, no. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like,

Phil DiCriscio (01:11:29.436)
Oh, there we go! Single! Let's go! Let's go!

Phil DiCriscio (01:11:50.454)
hahahaha

Chad (01:11:52.616)
damn it, I hate the Smiths. And he's like, why do you hate the Smiths? And I'm like, long story, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, he had a couple Smiths albums lent me the tapes or the CDs or whatever he had. And I was like, all right, time to get over my high school bullshit and just, you know, give them a fair shake. So I did. And you know, been a fan ever since, right. So.

Phil DiCriscio (01:12:10.012)
Yeah, for sure. But you get to, speaking of why this is my favorite. So, you know, first album is first album. Mina's Murder is in the right direction, but it lacks variety. And then you get to Mina's Murder and the playing's off the chart. It's the tightest rhythm section on any of the albums. It's Johnny Moore's most creative guitar part. Or guitar parts. Morrissey's lyrics are, I mean, they're whiny because that's Morrissey, but they're not like...

Crybaby, like his song, I Know It's Over, which is just about a breakup and knowing it's over, which I think we've all felt, like you get to the twilight of a relationship and you're just kinda, someone's gotta do something about this. But it's not whiny or crybaby, it's honest. There's a lot of honesty on this album. Cemetery Gates, or Cemetery Gates, British, it's this jangly upbeat song about...

Hating the Sun so you're gonna hang out at a cemetery, but he's not being Because Morse he is obviously a very contentious person. I think I think he's a bad person I think you know I think I don't think he's a monster, but I think he's a bad person and I I almost bought tickets to go see him once and I'm like he's gonna end up saying some nonsense about

Chad (01:13:20.627)
Yeah, agreed.

Phil DiCriscio (01:13:27.932)
some someone's race that is just not cool or or he's going to cancel the show because they're selling hot dogs like i'm just not dealing i don't buy ticket insurance i see look i go to my job every day i assume a professional goes to their job every day even rock stars they're hung over you go you deal with it you drink that water um but no i don't have time for morseese nonsense but something like a cemetery gates is is not contrarian it's just i'm moody and that's who i am uh

Chad (01:13:54.097)
I'm a sad bastard, yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:13:55.1)
Yes, Big Mouth Strikes Again, which is my favorite Smith song and my favorite on the album. This, that song, well, The Queen is Dead, the opening, because it has that kind of show tune beginning, is really produced. Great drum part, great kind of guitar overdubs. Big Mouth Strikes Again is catchy. The bass, Andy Rourke's bass, and Mike Joyce's drums, the pocket on that.

But then there's the the line a crack on the head and there's the production choice of having a like a whip or a slapstick And it's it's those little choices some girls are bigger than others a song about How people come in all shapes and sizes and apparently that bothers Morrissey? Because he's an asshole and and and I don't know about you Chad, but we respect our thick Queens I respect any woman who wants to talk to me I

Chad (01:14:33.521)
Bye.

Chad (01:14:40.657)
Hell yeah we do, are you kidding me?

Phil DiCriscio (01:14:48.09)
I literally have a Steely Dan podcast. So, you know, doesn't happen often. But no, some girls are bigger than others, which is a song about some women being fat, which is, but it's so good. It's so catchy. Anyway, but the fact like it starts out with with with the groove and it fades out and fades back in. And why does it? Does it have anything musically to do with the song? Is it like one of those artistic choices? No, it was just a production choice. And there's a lot of thinking on this album in terms of the production and the sound. And then after this.

So I just think I think it's a perfect encapsulation of the Smith's aesthetic. Morrissey's not too whiny. Johnny Mark has the shine and the rhythm section is just tight.

Chad (01:15:24.529)
The rhythm section is amazing. The bass playing and the Smiths in general, like you said, is, you know, once I started to really listen to them for some of the instrumentation, like the bass lines are just unreal. My favorite track on this album, you know, might be the obvious one, but I love There's a Light That Never Goes Out. I've always loved that song. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:15:42.524)
Oh, wonderful song. There I... So right before I got into The Smiths, I was listening to a lot of hardcore. There was like a local hardcore scene. Because I was into punk, but there was no punk scene, but there was like a hardcore scene, you know, just 16 year old kids playing at churches. And I got hit in the face a couple of times when I was two stepping. But. And I forget who, but one of those hardcore adjacent bands, not one of the local ones, but one of the bigger ones.

did an acoustic cover of There's a Light That Never Goes Out. It's a male and a female and they're duetting it. And it's just, it's beautiful. And then right after I heard that, I'm like, oh, it's a great tune. And then I ended up getting into the Smiths and then I was listening to them. I'm like, oh, I've heard this. It's, you know, yeah, I just, it's the Smiths. Like I think they're just great, tight band. You know, Morrissey gets memed on for obvious reasons. Johnny Morris, God, it's a tight rhythm section. I will say this.

Their next album the only reason I'm mentioning it is because there's only four to talk about right? Stranger ways here we come which they broke up before they finished it so it's a little It's not as produced as the Queen is dead But I think that album is quite good, too. I think a lot of songs are good It's just it is their last album. So like the first and last album suffer from first and last album Like every band has beginning album growing pains peak Decline they did they did all that in four albums first album

Chad (01:17:03.824)
Hahaha.

Phil DiCriscio (01:17:12.476)
Beginning, you know, beginning album syndrome. Second album, Meat is Murder, Growing Pains. Third album, Perfection. Fourth album, they didn't finish it. And they just... Weird flex, but okay. But how, yeah, so how's that third Lloyd Cole album? Is it like a dying album or is it okay? It's tight, it's tight.

Chad (01:17:20.463)
Louis Cole did it in three. Louis Cole did it in three.

Chad (01:17:30.77)
No, it's, it's real. It's, it's, it's tight. Um, yeah, just, just go listen to it. There's, there's no way to describe it. It's, it's, it's tight. The songwriting is amazing. Um, is it the opening track? Yeah, I think it's the opening track is called my bag. It's probably one of my favorite, Lloyd Cole and the commotion songs out of the three albums. Yeah. It's just a jam.

Phil DiCriscio (01:17:46.396)
Okay.

You do have to appreciate when a band goes out on a bang. Like a Van Halen, which one of their albums, and look, I probably have multiple albums from the same artist in the top 10, but I'm trying to like not. But Van Halen, at least I only consider the David Lee Roth era canon, sorry. But like you start out with Van Halen 1, amazing.

Chad (01:17:54.544)
Yep.

Phil DiCriscio (01:18:12.732)
Maybe it could be considered their best. My favorite is actually Fair Warning, because I have to be a weird contrarian. But then, the David Lee Roth run, they end with 1984. Like, they were blowing up that entire album, but you can't tell. And then they got Sammy Hagar, and he ruined that band. And then they got Gary Cherone, and they came out with Van Halen III. And then they got David Lee Roth back and recorded that reunion album, which is okay. I...

Chad (01:18:33.107)
He ruined it further, yeah.

That's awful. Look, I'm a, I was a Van Hagar hater when it happened, even though I did like Sammy Hagar, but retconning that era, there's some great songs on those albums. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:18:53.916)
There's great songs, but there's not great albums. Maybe 50 maybe 5150 maybe Actually funny enough Hagar's going on tour. I don't know if you saw that Yeah with Michael Michael Anthony's on bass Satriani's on guitar and then Bonham's kid Actually, it's funny cuz I'm seeing in the summer I'm seeing do be brothers in Holmdale or Holmdale and I posted on Facebook or whatever and my dad's like He texted me. He's like I'm seeing Sammy Hagar there. That's cool

Chad (01:19:03.795)
Yes. With... And... Yes.

Chad (01:19:15.187)
Yeah.

Chad (01:19:20.883)
hahahaha

Phil DiCriscio (01:19:22.428)
I mean, he actually came to visit today and we were talking about that. And I'm you think he's going to do like Van Hagar songs? And he's like, yeah, that's got to be half the set list. Like, same Hagar solo stuff is great. And what was that band? He was in Montrose, Montrose. Yeah, they're cool. But like, come on. Dreams, like they're not going to do dreams. They're not going to do, you know, pound cake.

Chad (01:19:28.499)
for sure. Yeah.

Chad (01:19:34.193)
Yeah, mantras.

Chad (01:19:39.251)
Right. I just love that he's playing with Satriani, who I love. I saw him, I went to one of the G3 tours back in the 90s and it just blew me away. It was the one with him, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson.

Phil DiCriscio (01:19:55.944)
Just talent.

Chad (01:19:57.363)
Yeah. And it was just this little tiny venue in Pennsylvania somewhere. I forget where, but it was like a, like in the realm kind of thing. Yeah. I can't think of the name of the venue, but it was just small and intimate and just unreal. Yeah. All right, man. So why don't we stop here and then we'll have to schedule part two. So we, you have what, three more albums to get through and I have, no, no, no, no.

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:02.66)
Oh.

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:06.3)
Yeah! Oh f -

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:23.452)
I'm sorry. I'm a as the kids say I'm a yapper

Chad (01:20:26.451)
No, that's fine. I'm enjoying this and I'm loving this format. So maybe I'll throw another album in the mix too and that way we'll have a... Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, sounds good.

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:32.41)
Yeah.

Yeah, let's do that. Do that. And then we can do a part two. Cool. Yeah, awesome. So yeah, which one? Because like I said, I have notes on all your albums. So what's the next one for you?

Chad (01:20:44.467)
I don't know, I gotta think about it. I just came up with those three off the top of my head. So what did I do? I did Lloyd, we're doing Prefab Sprout, we're doing Buffalo Tom. I feel like I wanna put a Smashing Pumpkins album in the mix because they are one of my favorite bands and one of my favorite album bands, one of the only bands that I've listened to albums.

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:50.94)
And then there's Buffalo Tom.

Phil DiCriscio (01:20:58.972)
Okay. So this is and please do Smashing Pumpkins because I need to listen to them. Hot Phil take. I don't like grunge. I... They're... but aren't they adjacent? Is it one of those things I'm like not... I'm not aware? Yeah, okay. So I like some of their songs to me, for me. And once again, like tell me an album to listen to and I will dig in and... Okay. Okay. Okay.

Chad (01:21:08.276)
They're not grunge. They're not grunge. Yes, it's Steely Dan Yacht Rock.

Chad (01:21:24.596)
calling it now. Siamese Dream. Go listen to Siamese Dream, that'll be my album. You're a rock kid, you're a punk kid, you're an emo kid. Blend all those together and you've got Siamese Dream. You'll dig it, trust me. And you'll know half the song because they were on the radio and you know, I maybe, I mean they were on the radio in the 90s but...

Phil DiCriscio (01:21:37.548)
Okay, um I I'm sure I will because Okay Yeah All right, yeah So I I like Billy Corgan not as a music

Chad (01:21:46.996)
you'll be familiar with at least two or three songs, but the non -album tracks are the ones, I mean, the non -hit single tracks were the ones that do it for me on that album. But the whole thing, just as a piece of music, is just one of my favorites. So.

Phil DiCriscio (01:22:04.796)
I'm not anti -Billy, I'm just But Billy Corgan bought the National Wrestling Alliance like a decade ago and I'm a huge pro wrestling fan and right before COVID, the NWA had a YouTube show, it was like an hour called NWA Power and it was old school, 70s studio style wrestling and like some ex -WWE guys that I grew up watching were on it and it was like being transported back to another time because you know they'd have the interviews at the desk and I was just like, is Ric Flair gonna show up and go woo? Like...

Chad (01:22:09.364)
Yes.

Chad (01:22:22.694)
Nice.

Chad (01:22:33.332)
Right.

Phil DiCriscio (01:22:34.3)
but and the COVID it ended that and but I love watching his interviews about rest like as a musician and like you would think, oh Billy Corgan, I love smashing pumpkins and he's the wrestling guy for me. It's like, no, he's he owns the NWA.

Chad (01:22:47.892)
He was such a huge fan. Yeah, well, he was such a huge fan, I think, like, you know, and he's my age or maybe a few years older than me. But I mean, like, I think he came up watching WWF and, you know, all the golden age of wrestling stuff. And I think he said that he was just like disgusted by what it had become. And he bought it to try to just turn it around and make it, you know, palatable again. And I think he's doing a good job.

Phil DiCriscio (01:23:05.564)
Yeah, and he did, for a few years, the NWA was awesome when he had it. They had this champion named Nick Aldis who was just, I think he was, he's English or Australian, he has one of those accents that I can't tell the difference of because I'm a dumb American. But you know, like your typical wrestler, tall, chiseled, could talk, could smack talk, could go, and he had the belt forever.

And it was really awesome watching him. And I was watching that power program for what, you know, it was free. And then COVID happened and then money and you end the NWA was struggling to begin with because it's not the WWE. And it kind of went away. But there's a couple of years, those were good times. And then I was forced to sit in my house for months. And then I got really depressed because everyone did because I couldn't see my friends.

Chad (01:23:41.428)
Yeah.

Chad (01:23:51.732)
Right.

Well, Corrigan's another Morrissey figure. He's kind of an asshole. Maybe not like, I don't think he's like, you know, a racist or political prior or whatever, but he's, he's just, and he's, but he's also like, he's an asshole. Like there's no other way to say it. Like, and people think that about him. And I, you know, I understand some of the artistic decisions that he was forced to make in the band before the, you know, in the original incarnation of the band, because, you know, they've gone through a few different lineups and we can talk about that when we talk about the Siamese Dream album. But, you know, I don't like the new stuff.

Phil DiCriscio (01:24:05.114)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:24:09.084)
No, he's just moody. He's a moody bastard.

Phil DiCriscio (01:24:31.668)
Yeah.

Chad (01:24:31.734)
You know and and sometimes with an artist I'm ride -or -die like I listen to anything they do and I'll you know Like most of it because I just do but there's some artists where there's a point where I'm like, okay You're done like I can't you know, they went a whole different direction or you know Whatever and some of the pumpkin stuff to come out the last ten years has been pretty decent But for the most part I haven't really been into it, but we'll cover all that next time. Yeah. All right good

Phil DiCriscio (01:24:53.02)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, alright, you said you're gonna do one more album, though.

Chad (01:24:58.388)
Yeah, same as Dream. No!

Phil DiCriscio (01:24:59.58)
Oh, I thought you meant right now. Like you were gonna cover - Oh, I thought we were gonna do like an even, like a three and three. Oh, okay.

Chad (01:25:04.756)
I think we can just because because you're gonna have you still have two more, right?

Phil DiCriscio (01:25:08.412)
Uh, two more. Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (01:25:11.06)
So how many more? That gives me three more. All right, let's do one more then. We're only at an hour 25. We can get through prefab sprout. All right, good. Let's do that one next. I'm going in chronological order on mine, by the way.

Phil DiCriscio (01:25:13.564)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. OK.

Phil DiCriscio (01:25:22.3)
Yeah, yeah, because what was that 85 and then what he calls 84? Yeah.

Chad (01:25:25.364)
Yeah, yeah, Lloyd Cole was 84, Prefab Sprout's 85. So my other album is Prefab Sprout. So the American release that I was familiar with was called Two Wheels Good. Yes, the original title. Yes.

Phil DiCriscio (01:25:36.732)
Cause Steve McQueen sued, right? So the album is called Steve McQueen. The cover is just them. They're like on a motorcycle, but it's not Steve McQueen. There's no image, but he sued, correct? Was he dead at the time? Okay.

Chad (01:25:48.596)
His estate sued them because they didn't, yeah, he was dead at the time, but I think he sued them for just like, you know, likeness rights for using the name or whatever. So when they re -released it or released it in the States, they had to change the name. So they called it Two Wheels Good. But since then that's been resolved or maybe record company paid off McQueen's estate or something. Cause now it's, yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:25:56.38)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:26:07.74)
Cause I looked it up on Spotify and I just typed in it's proof wrap sprout Steven Queen and yeah.

Chad (01:26:11.7)
Yeah, it's there now. So they changed the name back, you know, I don't know, years ago. So another album that I think I mentioned this earlier that my friends from Ireland turned me on to. So Pre -Five Sprout is an Irish band. They got together, it's two brothers, Patti McAloon and Martin McAloon. Wendy Smith is the, she plays keys and guitar and sings and then...

Phil DiCriscio (01:26:24.06)
Okay.

Yeah, she sings on, she does like a duet on one of these tracks, right? Beautiful voice.

Chad (01:26:39.539)
She's yeah, and she's all over all their albums. She has like just this ethereal angelic voice and she does all these like really high harmonies and counter melodies and stuff and she's amazing. So and then Neil Conti, I'm not sure if he was the original drummer, but he's on all the albums. So fucking phenomenal drummer, by the way, like if you really listen to him and Martin McAloon is a great bass player, like another tight rhythm section. So.

Phil DiCriscio (01:27:02.972)
Yeah, I loved, once again, I loved the va - like the feel, the groove. Oh, Otis, Otis. My dude. That's not on my records, Otis.

Chad (01:27:07.027)
Yeah.

Chad (01:27:11.923)
He got excited. He heard groove and he's like, yeah, man, groove.

Phil DiCriscio (01:27:15.26)
Sorry. Yeah, he's a slinky little thing, so he doesn't enjoy vibing out as the kids say. Stop. And I took all my records out of the sleeves. Not out of the sleeves. Yeah, yeah, so like just to have an empty record so I can case. And so I have all of them just stacked and he is just sitting on my brand new 2LP 145 Stevie Wonder. I guess I spoiled one of the albums we were going to talk about. Thanks, dude.

Chad (01:27:22.227)
Ha ha.

Chad (01:27:26.705)
And of course he's walking on them.

Chad (01:27:35.922)
Ha ha ha ha.

Phil DiCriscio (01:27:44.412)
I literally cannot afford to spend money on records. I'm waiting for a check to come in. I had to do it for the show and tell.

Chad (01:27:47.026)
I appreciate the effort man. That's that's great. Right. Just gave me the excuse to buy it. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:27:54.652)
Well, I just, I wanted them and I'm like, I know I'm coming to some money and I'm just like, instead of waiting a week, when I get my check, I'll just.

Phil DiCriscio (01:28:06.108)
Anyway, I also, I ordered completely different. The other two fiction Steely Dan books, the Beasts Without a Name, and so I ordered them. What's the other, whatever the other one was called. They were in my cart. Yeah, but yeah, you said they're great, so I, and they're not that expensive, I just, I was just waiting to. Anyway, Prefab Sprout, Steve McQueen, or AKA, what did you say it was? The US Two Wheels Good.

Chad (01:28:06.418)
There you go.

Chad (01:28:11.89)
Oh yeah.

Chad (01:28:17.497)
Uh, forgot, yeah. They're great. Yeah.

Chad (01:28:24.721)
Good, good, good.

Two Wheels Good. Yeah. So again, album that, and it wasn't even the first album that I was turned on to from Prefab Sprout. It was from Langley Park to Memphis, which was the next album, which is I think their third. So Steve McQueen was their second record. First one was Swoon, which was like a small, I think indie release. Got a lot of critical acclaim, didn't really get a whole lot of commercial success. I don't think they kind of broke in the UK until Steve McQueen came out. But there is a song on Langley Park.

called Cars and Girls. And that was the first track I heard because my buddies from Ireland were obsessed with it and they played it like all the time. And it's basically about Bruce Springsteen, right? So the chorus of that song goes, some things hurt more, much more than cars and girls. Right? And they actually name check them. Like the opening line is, the opening line is, Brucey dreams, life's a highway.

Phil DiCriscio (01:29:09.316)
Okay.

Phil DiCriscio (01:29:17.404)
Yeah. Oh! So that's just their thing is referencing people they like.

Chad (01:29:25.457)
Or, you know, or taking the piss out of in this case, I think, right? So, so back to Steve McQueen, you know, I kind of retro into that album because I heard Langley Park to Memphis and just, you know, fell in love with that band. So of course, my buddy was like, okay, we'll go back and listen to the first two albums because you know, they're they're great also. So but Steve McQueen has really just stuck with me as you know, my favorite Sprouts album. I dare say is track.

Chad (01:29:54.833)
to Bonnie is one of my favorite songs ever of all time, full stop across any, yeah, yeah, it's.

Phil DiCriscio (01:29:57.15)
Really? I liked it. I liked Appetite a lot actually on this. That might have been my favorite. Or Horsing Around.

Chad (01:30:04.079)
Yes.

like Horsin' Around too. I love Hallelujah, another good one. And the whole album, again, is just fantastic. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:30:11.354)
Yes.

I liked it. I liked it. Song, song, length variety, song structure variety. Great song writing. I wrote here as part of my notes, Smith's, Django slash country. Because like Django could be country. You think of like Telecaster on like Hee -Haw or whatever. But then say it can go like Emo, Sadboy, Smith's, or it can go country. And they, it's cool because that you said they're Irish. So Ireland does have that great history of their.

Chad (01:30:27.505)
Yes.

Chad (01:30:36.862)
Mm -hmm.

Phil DiCriscio (01:30:43.938)
Native music which is can be perceived country. I was gonna say it's all kind of guitar driven banjo So then they kind of take that sound and then Kind of just put some eight mid 80s kind of I don't know sad boy on it. I guess Jack stat stat sad boy stank if you will mid 80s Morrissey said I loved it

Chad (01:30:45.905)
And a lot of it's adjacent to country. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad (01:30:51.758)
Mm hmm. Very sad boy.

Phil DiCriscio (01:31:09.34)
And this is one of those things I wrote down again, is like, if I heard them before the Smiths, I might be picking this album. Because I love the sound. It's just what I... Because I tend to gravitate toward a sound, find my band, and then just... A .K .A. Steely Dan. I know there is, but that's... I'm trying to branch out. I just... I just know how I am. Like, I bought every Pink Floyd album on CD instead of, like, trying out Yes. I was like, no, I just gotta get... I gotta get... I gotta get Umma Gumma. Even though I know it's crap. I gotta get, you know...

Chad (01:31:13.947)
Well, you know, you can... Oh, there's room for more, man. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:31:39.036)
my third copy of Dark Side of the Moon because it's a different mix that I'm definitely gonna hear the difference on my crappy little boombox in my room. Yeah, and that's how I've always been. Yeah.

Chad (01:31:39.441)
Well...

Chad (01:31:45.392)
You go deep before you go wide. I get that. Yeah, I'm the same way with certain things too. But the cool thing about Prefab Sprout is yes, it sounds like 80s, but it's evergreen. Like it doesn't sound dated, even though it does have some 80s production value. By the way, produced by Thomas Dolby, who is a fucking genius.

Phil DiCriscio (01:32:00.956)
It is timeless, it has a timeless...

Phil DiCriscio (01:32:08.302)
So yeah, he had that bit where his big hit was was what she blinded me was like but he's like a real like he's a Audio guy like he is a tech guy. Is he responsible for like the Dolby digital sounders? That's just a coincidence

Chad (01:32:12.128)
She blinded me with science. Yeah.

No coincidence that different Dolby but he did work with I think a lot of equipment manufacturers for like synthesizers and recording gear and stuff like that like he helped develop and test and you know make things better like he was a real gear head apparently but I'm not sure it's online you could probably Google it if you're interested or anybody who's listening is interested but I'm not sure how he got hooked up with prefab sprout but I think on the strength of their first album

Um, somehow somebody said to Thomas Dolby, like, Hey, you have to check out this band or whatever. And apparently Patty just had this like shoe box full of, um, songs, like just, you know, lyrics and chord charts and stuff. Like just, and I guess, um, you know, when Dolby sort of drove over to meet with him or whatever, Patty just whips out a guitar and starts playing stuff. And, and Dolby's like, well, do you have any more songs like this? And Patty's like, yeah, I got a whole bunch, you know, like, you know, we're.

Phil DiCriscio (01:33:00.604)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:33:14.344)
Yeah.

Chad (01:33:16.208)
We're trying to figure out what's going on the next record or whatever. So I think that between the two of them, they sat and cherry picked all the songs that are on Steve McQueen because Dolby was like, this is a great song, this is a great song, this is a great song, whatever. And they collaborated on building a track list, I think, if I'm remembering the story correctly. So they built these things up from just acoustic demos all the way into these lushly produced, super sonically tight songs, right?

Phil DiCriscio (01:33:26.604)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:33:40.396)
Yeah.

Chad (01:33:45.775)
And Dolby plays some keyboards, I think on the album. Yeah, of course he does

Phil DiCriscio (01:33:47.708)
I saw that on the, yeah. He has to, Thomas Dolby is always one of those artists that have interested me. He's kind of like a, to me, like a Wendy Carlos. Like just innovative, but under the radar. Like everyone knows the name Thomas Dolby. Everyone knows the name Wendy Carlos. But like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen eight -year -old wearing a Nirvana shirt. I just, stares, stares and nevermind.

Chad (01:34:00.463)
Yeah. Yep. Name three songs.

Phil DiCriscio (01:34:18.716)
But also I just I think there's a connection to with that because synth obviously Wendy Carlos was like a Pioneer and those old weird synths where you had to like do that the things and you had to like to keep tuning the synth Thomas Dolby Yeah, lived in an era where it was a little It was easier to play a synth so therefore you could be more creative But yeah, one of those names and has always just kind of been around Thomas Dolby

Chad (01:34:24.595)
Yeah. Yeah, it was manual.

Chad (01:34:39.284)
Right.

Phil DiCriscio (01:34:44.988)
and is sometimes relegated to a meme, unfortunately, because of that. And I like that song, Shipwinding with Science, and the video, it's one of those important, like, MTV, it's like the Buggles thing, right, and the thriller, like, one those important, for better, for worse, things that put MTV on the map.

Chad (01:34:51.12)
That's a great song.

Chad (01:35:00.654)
Yeah, oh, for sure. And his, I have another album of his that I really like is called Aliens Ate My Buick. So he's a little quirky, right? Like his solo stuff is a little funny, but it's great. The first song on that is a song called The Key to Her Ferrari. It's just fabulous. Go listen to it, that's all. It's funny. It's, yeah, it's funny. It's got horns. It's, you know, it's just got this.

Phil DiCriscio (01:35:06.7)
Yeah, you have to be. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:35:16.014)
Okay? Okay.

Chad (01:35:29.326)
great sort of zippy kind of vibe to it. I don't know how else to describe it. And then the rest of that album is just great too. There's a song that was I think it was a minor hit for him called Hot Sauce. I forget what else is on there. Anyway, so all this to say is like and then I think he stuck with them. I think he produced or co -produced the next album for Prefab Sprout, which is from Langley Park to Memphis. But again, another band where, you know,

Phil DiCriscio (01:35:44.372)
Okay, yeah

Chad (01:35:53.747)
started listening to it because I was drawn to the songs and the sounds and the playing, right? And we have this in common, I think, that we really are drawn to bands with really tight rhythm sections. And this is another one, right? The bass and the drums on this are just, yeah. But then when I started listening more to the lyrics on Prefab's albums, it's another, you know, Patty gets deep into cultural references and things that I wasn't aware of. Like, you know, the opening track, right, which is kind of the country -fied one, Farron Young. I didn't...

Phil DiCriscio (01:35:57.492)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:36:04.256)
Yeah, oh, oh, tight. Tight.

Phil DiCriscio (01:36:21.756)
Yes, great track, great opening.

Chad (01:36:23.279)
Didn't know who Farron Young was, right? Had to go look him up back in the day and he's the old country singer. Right? So yeah, never heard of him, right? Cause he wasn't, I guess he wasn't as popular, you know, in mainstream culture as like a Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson. But I think he was in that same kind of, you know, realm of, of, yeah. Right. So I don't know. I'm trying to think what else.

Phil DiCriscio (01:36:30.428)
Oh, okay, I was gonna say, who is? I actually didn't look it up. So it's an old country singer. Yeah.

Chad (01:36:49.069)
I don't know, but there's so many things to explore in their music. And I think it's like Steely Dan where it never gets old and I'm still hearing things that maybe I didn't hear. Goodbye Lucille number one, which was not the original song title. I don't know why they changed all their shit, but the song, I think when it was released in the UK was just called Johnny Johnny, because that's kind of the refrain. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:37:06.364)
That's what it says on Wikipedia, yeah.

Chad (01:37:10.351)
That song is, you know, it's a very clever song, but also musically it does this one cool little thing that I love where it's, life's not complete till your heart's missed a beat. And they kind of miss a beat two different ways when they say that line, the two different times they say it in the song. Yeah, you go back and check that out. Like, they don't really miss the beat, but they kind of, everything goes off kilter for a beat and then it picks back up again. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:37:23.752)
Okay, I don't think I noticed that I'll have to go back and yeah, yeah, yeah

Phil DiCriscio (01:37:33.02)
That's awesome. That's awesome.

Chad (01:37:35.087)
It's great. And it's clever, like you said, without being trite, you know? So...

Phil DiCriscio (01:37:39.516)
Yes, yes. I wrote down one lyric and it's actually from Ferrin Young that just, and once again, unfortunately I couldn't sit headphones and, but I, you know, throughout my day I was listening, but Ferrin Young has this awesome lyric, I think it might be the chorus, the, you offer infrared instead of sun. Or is that, is that exactly, yep. And like, and then it rhymes, you offer paper spoons and bubble gum, but just that line, you offer infrared instead of sun says,

Chad (01:37:55.067)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Phil DiCriscio (01:38:09.116)
could say anything or could say everything about anything and it's one of those things where...

It's like in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke asks Yoda what's in the cave, and he's like, only what you take with you. Like that, or, or, or, only what you take, what a Yoda's it. But no, it's one of those, like, some songs.

Like a song like Coming Clean by Green Bay is about, you know.

joke coming out but it could be anything it could be owning up to something you did it could be revealing secrets it's what you take with you but this one you offer infrared instead of Sun is just you get the the you know infrared which humans kind of have to it's like it exists but we to make it happen we have to produce it Sun obviously being this natural glowing ball just like

Chad (01:38:41.045)
Right.

Chad (01:39:00.045)
Yeah, some of the stuff's really deep and you know what the actual meaning is, we may never know, but like you said, it's what you interpret. Bonnie, I think is, you know, again, it's one of my favorite songs ever, but one of the lyrics on that song is one of my favorite pre -fab sprout lyrics, and it's, I count the hours since you slipped away, I count the hours that I lie awake. Is it a breakup song? Maybe, I don't know, but that's sure how it reads. Yeah, it could be that song, right? Somebody said that they thought it was written about his.

Phil DiCriscio (01:39:06.092)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:39:22.91)
Could be a death song. Could be... cause what could -

Chad (01:39:28.109)
his father dying, which would make sense, right? Slipped away. But I always, I guess as a young person that was, you know, always whatever, you know, falling in love and falling out of love, right? Like we all do. I think that that's how I, you know, sort of connected to that lyric, you know.

Phil DiCriscio (01:39:29.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:39:45.948)
Oh, for sure. And I think it's something to be said about the universal feeling of being in and out of love. That it's so, in so many instances, it can be a metaphor of falling in and out of love, could just also be living or dying. Because, you know, when you're in a good spot with a good person, you feel 100 % and the second it's over, it's like...

Chad (01:40:00.749)
Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:40:10.714)
You know, then you get a Morrissey sad boy on it and be sad and it does, you know, I've been through bad breakups and you feel a little empty afterwards for, you know, whatever reason. And no, I wasn't, I wouldn't compare it to death, but if I was a poet or a lyricist, I think that was...

Chad (01:40:12.653)
hahahaha

Chad (01:40:32.234)
Yeah. Well, yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:40:34.14)
Cool out, like I said, another group I never heard of. I don't think I heard of the three you gave me. I don't, I might've heard of Buffalo Tom. I probably heard of Buffalo Tom because they're adjacent to Dinosaur Jr., right? They like know each other. They, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chad (01:40:44.845)
Yeah, and the Pixies and Betty Severit, like they were all that sort of like that same sort of, you know, post -grunge or, you know, grunge adjacent type bands, you know.

Phil DiCriscio (01:40:50.752)
Yeah, yeah, so but no it's so really cool III because I'm I was ignorant to it I always considered the Smiths kind of like a weird outlier I mean cuz they're similar to the cure kind of but not like they're just kind of their own Jaggedly think but these are two albums that are to me Smiths adjacent in terms of sound and and literally with Lori Cole literally Morrissey adjacent but just really cool like a cool sound I love that jangly sound and

It will give me more variety than the same four Smith albums, three compilations and one live album. Because I don't listen to Morrissey solo stuff. I actually reached out on the pod page. There's a, you should follow him. He's awesome. I think it's all you need is Moz. It's just a Morrissey at slash Smiths. He's like the Steely Phil of Morrissey. And I reached out to him yesterday. I'm like, what are the best like Moz solo albums? Because like I know the song Suedehead.

Phil DiCriscio (01:41:49.5)
And that one song that samples Shasako is just Fifth Symphony and that's the sample. It's amazing. So that was cool. But no, I just more, I love jangle, I love little country influence, love sad boy lyrics about breakups and just being sad.

Chad (01:42:08.555)
And Prefab kind of follows to me the same trajectory that Lloyd Cole did across the three albums. Prefab has more albums, six or seven, I think, official studio albums, and maybe more. I'm drawing a blank right now. Anyway, they also sort of develop a bit musically as you go, like more horns and strings and keys and things like that. So worth checking out their two albums after this one, two or three albums after this one. Yeah.

Phil DiCriscio (01:42:34.172)
I have a, I got a couple months till summer, so I'll have to kind of sit on some things and then got a couple months off where all I do is listen to music and sleep and stop being around humans for a while.

Chad (01:42:42.571)
Nice. Cool. I hear that, man. I hear that.

Phil DiCriscio (01:42:51.036)
This was awesome, man. This was aw - Thanks for having me on, um, and yeah, we'll be in talks about part two, right? At some point. Yeah.

Chad (01:42:52.331)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for coming.

Chad (01:42:59.563)
We'll talk about it soon. We should get it on the calendar and get it recorded because I think we have we each have two other like killer albums to get through. So.

Phil DiCriscio (01:43:05.724)
Oh, for sure. I'm... Sundays. That's my... Sundays are good. So, yeah, hit me up and we'll figure it out. Cool. Thanks, Chad. Oh, looking forward to it. Oh, yeah, take care and enjoy the rest of your weekend. Take care. See ya.

Chad (01:43:11.019)
days are good.

can happen. All right. Phil, thanks again, and we'll schedule part two and we'll talk soon. All right. You too. See ya.